In this page we will try to classify traits that are typical for corporate psychopaths. this is a
very limited approach but it has certain value as a early warning system.
We also touch an important theme of connection of psychopaths in corner office
and neoliberalism. As
Paul Verhaeghe noted
Neoliberalism
has brought out the worst in us

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology
that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation
and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term
before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role
in a remarkable variety of crises: the
financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the
Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health
and education, resurgent child poverty,
the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of
Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation,
apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the
same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater
power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market
ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even
recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition
that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force;
a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution.
But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human
life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations.
It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised
by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It
maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation
should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour
and collective bargaining by
trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of
a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward
for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts
to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive.
The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds.
The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit,
ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have
helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even
when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you
are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card
is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no
longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world
governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as
losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders,
depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal
ideology has been most rigorously applied, is
the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals
now.

***

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates
were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s
New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations
of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government
planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control.
Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely
read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy
an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek
founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism –
the
Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their
foundations.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s
view that governments should regulate competition to prevent
monopolies from forming gave way – among American apostles such
as
Milton Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could
be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In
1951, Friedman was happy to
describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear.
Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent,
the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins.
The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes’s economic
prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty
were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were
high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing
new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic
crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the
mainstream. As Friedman remarked, “when the time came that you had to change ...
there was an alternative ready there to be picked up”. With the help of
sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism,
especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter’s
administration in the US and Jim Callaghan’s government in Britain.

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been
promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package
soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions,
deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services.
Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade
Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic
consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties
that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As
Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as
fully realised.”

***

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have
been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. But, as Hayek remarked
on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme
was comprehensively applied – “my personal preference leans toward a liberal
dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism”.
The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed
in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to
suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers,
endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic
financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of
wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

Naomi Klein documented that neoliberals advocated the use of crises to
impose unpopular policies while people were distracted.

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists
advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were
distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, the Iraq war and
Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as “an opportunity to radically
reform the educational system” in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed
internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute
settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal
of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict
sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy
bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations
have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly
became one

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon
universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers
and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime
of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the
losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic
nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly
became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era
(since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not
for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth,
after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of
trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water,
trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up
tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or
to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you
pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the
operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other
outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services and
soon became the world’s richest man.

Those who own and run the UK’s privatised or semi-privatised services make
stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India,
oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was
granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became
the world’s richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, has
had a similar impact. “Like rent,” he argues, “interest is ... unearned income
that accrues without any effort”. As the poor become poorer and the rich become
richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money.
Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the
rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with
debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and
their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer
of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the
wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to
those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent,
interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the
banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering
public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot
that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that
competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps
the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments
use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise
remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate
corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth
into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises
it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced,
our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts.
Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending.
But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder
democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of
the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar
neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers
of people have been shed from politics.

Chris Hedges remarks that “fascist movements build their base not from the
politically active but the politically inactive, the ‘losers’ who feel, often
correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment”.
When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead
to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts
and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and
the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only
remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared
is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that
arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to “cajoling,
threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them”.

***

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine
staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of
anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible
backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of
them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued
forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry,
has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover
that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the
institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in
establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that “in order to avoid undesirable
criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely
advertised”.

The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had inherited their
money. Today, the relationship has been reversed

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. “The
market” sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like
gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What
“the market wants” tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want.
“Investment”, as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the
funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase
of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains.
Using the same word for different activities “camouflages the sources of
wealth”, leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited
their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as
rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors
style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned
income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness
of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know
for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore
secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial
owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products
no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced
by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining – with some
justice – that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no
substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but
these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they
suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or
Friedman’s classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

***

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at
least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted
by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It
was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

The left has produced no new framework of economic thought for 80 years. This
is why the zombie walks

Neoliberalism’s triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When
laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a
comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management
hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when
neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie
walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic
thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose
Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious
problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in
the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say
about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by
stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and
economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it’s not
enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For
Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop
an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system,
tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

• George Monbiot’s How Did We Get into This Mess? is published this month by
Verso. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) ) go to bookshop.theguardian.com
or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders
min p&p of £1.99.

greatapedescendant -> chrismc2

Why not read his book? Here's how I see it ... The application and
manipulation of neoliberalist philosophy by the wealthy elite, the
overprivileged and those who aspire to own and control the world, remains
the root of all the woes of your average citizen in advanced Western
democracies. Not to mention its devastating repercussions in other
areas. The tool of ongoing class war. The world is living under a ruthless
dictatorship. A financial one in which economics dictates to politics.
Barring a revolution, this promises to be a slow, uphill struggle for those
like the Corbyns and the Sanders who seek a more just wold. A much needed
article to enlighten the ignorant and remind the forgetful. Another world
order is possible. And, pending that, another Britain is possible. Curious
to discover whether GM provides any insightful answers or constructive
suggestions, I may even read this one. In 10 minutes in the bookshop.

notmurdoch -> GizmoGizmo

Neoliberalism is real. It's just that there is no viable alternative to
it, for free societies.

It's not for a lack of trying that the Left has failed to come up with an
alternative. Much of Central and South America spent the last 15 years on
various anti-liberal experiments, every one of which has resulted in painful
and obvious failure.

Toeparty

This is a great piece. Lovely forensic research of the roots and
outcomes of the neo-liberal poison. I would only say that neo-liberalism
like Keynesianism before it is not the ideology but the prescription for
a dying system. The real ideology is the continued belief in capitalism
when it is clearly finished or that a prescription to save it can be
found. A realistic survey of the state of capitalism should have told
these neo-liberals that capitalism had run its course but of course that
is not what the rich are paying to hear. Bring me excuses, they say, not
solutions. As for the left it merely needs to rediscover socialism.

"The main lesson I have learnt is that when dealing with a sociopath, the normal rules of
etiquette do not apply. You are dealing with someone who has no empathy, no conscience, no remorse,
and no guilt...It is a completely different mindset. Words like 'predator' and 'evil' are often
used."

Neoliberalism is a social system that rewards and promotes psychopathic
personalities. Among its results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book
What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders,
depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal
ideology has been most rigorously applied, is
the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals
now so to report to a psychopathic manager is no longer something extraordinary. Neoliberalism sees competition
(as in the "law of jungles") as the defining characteristic of human relations.
It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised
by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It
maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit
"dog eat dog" competition between people are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation
should be minimized, public services should be privatized. The organization of
labor
and collective bargaining by
trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of
a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward
for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts
to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive.
The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalize and reproduce neoliberal dogmas much like people of the USSR
enslaved by Bolsheviks reproduced communist dogmas and did not view themselves
as slaves. The salaried employees begin to blame themselves for their failures, even
when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Psychopathic managers prevent subordinates doing their jobs and prevent employees fulfilling their
duties. Most employees in IT are competent and have both the desire and ability to do good work. What
is missing in some organizations is an environment that encourages and enables the expression of that
competence. In his book, Hall (1988a) states,

If we are to achieve excellence in our organizations and communities, we must be willing to reorient.
We must make a presumption of competence in the workplace rather than incompetence, for high-level
performance rests on the simple, yet not widely accepted, premise that
people will behave competently if we will but let them. (pp. 29-30)

No matter what is precise classification all toxic managers are cruel with subordinates
and created out of the work environment "living hell". Incompetent, dishonest but scheming they charm
the higher ups and climb on the back of others to achieve power. But it is important to understand that
toxic managers would never achieves their goals and climb up the ladder without the disorganization
and willful ignorance of his supervisors typical for some large corporations (Enron is a typical example
here). Fish rots from the head.

The condition itself has been recognized for centuries, wearing evocative labels such as "madness
without delirium" and "moral insanity" until the late 1800s, when "psychopath"
was coined by a German clinician. This condition can be studied by watching film that depict a large
variety of psychopath and allow some generalization based on this experience (which is much better/safer
method to get some level of awareness, then facing one in you own office).

But the term (and its later 1930s synonym that is more applicable to corporate environment, sociopath
-- "socialized psychopath") had always been a sort of catch-all, widely and loosely applied to violent
and unstable criminals who seemed. See
Psychopathic corporation page
for the exploration of connection between corporate psychopaths and modern government organizations
and megacorporations.

The key feature of such people that do not treat others as humans, they treat them as animals. Later
this condition was expanded to include certain type of managers that consistently demonstrate cult leader
qualities and which became a standard feature of most corporation to the extent that we can consider
corporations to be a breeding grounds for psychopathic personalities. Such "office cult leaders" like
many high demand cult leaders need only followers and try to completely enslave their victims.

"The psychopath has no allegiance to the company at all, just to self,"....
"A psychopath is playing a short-term parasitic game."

In 1980, Hare created a list of static traits, which, revised five years later, became known as the
PCL-R. Popularly called "the Hare," the PCL-R measures psychopathic personality on a forty-point scale.
Despite obvious shortcomings and severe limitations typical for any traits-based classification, once
it emerged, it helped to make the meaning of the term more uniform. This is covered in more detail at
Classification of Corporate Psychopaths

While the executive with sociopathic traits is pretty common most such individuals don't typically
wind up in prison. They are called socialized psychopaths or sociopaths. In fact, many are promotes
explicitly due to callousness and ruthlessness they demonstrate and wind up in the cushioned leather
chairs of the executive office(Chain
Saw Al):

In 2005, the business magazine
Fast
Company included Dunlap in the article 'Is Your Boss a
Psychopath', noting he
"might score impressively on the Corporate Psychopathy checklist." The magazine's editor. John A.
Byrne, noted: "In all my years of reporting, I had never come across an executive as manipulative,
ruthless, and destructive as Al Dunlap. Until the Securities and Exchange Commission barred him
from ever serving as an officer of a public corporation, Dunlap sucked the very life and soul out
of companies and people. He stole dignity, purpose, and sense out of organizations and replaced
those ideals with fear and intimidation."

In popular literature, psychopath is often defined as someone who displays several distinguishing
characteristics, such as deceitfulness, compulsive lying
(lying even when they're is no real need to hide the truth), impulsivity and a lack of remorse. Compulsive
lying and cruelty to animals in adolescence are two pretty reliable indicators of this condition.
Right wing authoritarians (RWA) also display many similar traits,
but in no way they are psychopaths. As
The
Washington Monthly noted

Typically sociopaths demonstrates a superficial charm, which they exercise ruthlessly in order to
get what they want. In this sense women are a much more dangerous type of
psychopath. That implies that working women, especially in IT have an enemy more formidable
than men. Female psychopaths usually see everything in terms of competition and
female
aggression. They have zero respect for their own gender. Just the opposite, they often hate it.
Statistics suggest that a woman is the target in eight of every ten cases of bulling.
But, paradoxically, in six of 10 cases, it is a woman who is the bully.
They despise and attack female subordinates and try to undermine their more successful/competent female
peers.

In the latter case, they assume that they have achieved their success by using charm/sex/chicanery.
They also use their gender as a bulletproof vest against males, claiming discrimination when it is convenient
to them. This dirty trick of "fake victim" works wonders in modern bureaucratic organizations. Female-to-female
aggression is also observable in primates. Dominant female try to suppress reproductive success of competitor
females in various ways including subjecting them to constant stress via harassment and intimidation
and/or attacking offspring:

Holmstrom (1992) summarizes his review by saying that indirect strategies were observed among female
great apes during the following three circumstances:

In the power struggle among females, by cannibalistically feeding on the competitor's offspring;

against the male, in sexual contexts by refusal of cooperation to sexual access; also in
competition for food, and feeding on the male's offspring;

through the offspring, by rearing the young and transmitting models of behavior from one
generation to the next. The female thus prevents and restrains certain kinds of action in the
offspring, permitting and favoring others. Accordingly, the social intelligence of higher primates
should not be underestimated. As Byrne and Whiten (1987) have shown, chimpanzees are also fully
capable of faking nonverbal signals, in order to deceive competitors.

There is a not so obvious link of corporate psychopath and cult leaders. They generally demonstrate
the same methods: they never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors permissible.
They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely
an instrument to be used. They dominate and humiliate their victims trying to convert them to
slaves.

Surprising percentage of corporate psychopaths are women, They does not see others around her/him
as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices
who end up as victims and, in corporate environment, slaves.

List of common sociopathic traits which might help
to alert you to the danger

Compulsive,
pathological
lying. And due to this frequent self-contradiction especially about the fact of
personal history; invented past and or excessive boasting about his successes (often of
sexual nature); they are compulsive liars and
lie even when there is no obvious need to it...

Manipulative, arrogant, callous behaviour as a norm. Complete lack of remorse and
empathy. as manipulative and cunning" as con artists. Their personality attributes typically
include superficial charm, unreliability, untruthfulness, and insincerity. Pathological
egocentricity, selfishness, and rejection of authority and discipline,

Impatient/Impulsiveness/Exaggerated sexuality ( Impulsiveness is less common
for corporate sociopaths; those prone to this are weeded early by corporate culture). But
exaggerated sexuality is very common and is a good warning sign. They tend to be impulsive
risk takers in life as well as in sex.

Unreliability, untruthfulness, and insincerity. Please understand that betrayal
is a typical behaviour for them, and they resort to it in situation were normal person would
never do without any remorse...

Prone to fly into rages. See Borderline
Rage "natural emotion is consciously controlled and used as a sharp weapon.

Inability to accept any responsibility for their actions. Typically they has
little or no concern about the consequences of their actions. That actually make them very
effective sexual predators as a side effect.

"Courage under fire." In high tension situations they behave rationally and are
not prone to panic.

Corporate America is a veritable hive of white-collar crazies. Identifying, defining, and diagnosing
exact personality disorders your boss suffers from can be a tricky business. Still one sign is universal:
the workplace in such cases quickly becomes overflowing with tension.

These white-collar psychopaths or sociopaths are "individuals who most often do not act out in a
criminal way, yet can be just as manipulative and cunning" as a serial killer. Their personality attributes
"typically include superficial charm, unreliability, untruthfulness, and insincerity, [a] lack of guilt,
remorse, or shame, [and] a need to engage in thrill-seeking behavior," as well as pathological lying,
egocentricity, selfishness, and rejection of authority and discipline, according to the authors. In
short, they are corporate con artists. They're the tech administrators who over-order company laptops
and hawk them on eBay, or employees who sabotage bosses' and coworkers' careers by appropriating their
ideas and denigrating their performance to supervisors. They're the outgoing employees who act friendly
to their colleagues only to stab them in the back at every opportunity.

Middle management may be the natural habitat of the white-collar psychopath: Psychopaths are known
for their extroversion, their charm, and their polished social skills, and complete disregard of people
while trying to achieve corporate goals. Such traits are rewarded within many organizations.

In Snakes in Suits, the authors argue that corporate psychopaths follow a "PPP" pattern
that involves three types of players:

Pawns. Psychopaths recruit pawns such as lower-ranking employees
or peers, whom they can manipulate.

Patrons. Patrons are higher-level managers whom the psychopath wins over. They often
provide cover for psychopath. It is at them all the charm is directed (which makes behavior of sociopath
similar to the behavior of authoritarian - quintessential kiss up --
kick down personality). Because the psychopath seems
charming to higher-ups, he or she can counter accusations.

Patsies. The patsies are pawns and patrons whom the psychopath has abused, taken advantage
of, cheated, blamed, or ridiculed

Their penetration in organization is usually staged in several phases:

The entry phase, in which the psychopath charms the hiring team into selecting him or
her for the job.

The assessment phase. Here, the psychopathic employee identifies
the potential support network of that consist of:

Patrons (those who will protect and defend the psychopath),

Pawns (those who can be unwittingly manipulated into using their power in service
of the psychopath's aims),

Organizational Police (staff in such control functions as audit, security, human
resources who might get in the way).

The manipulation phase: the psychopath works the patrons and pawns, building the influence
network through close and intense one-on-one relationships and at the same time moving up the organization.

One needs to understand that being a target of a psychopath is a permanent position. One horrifying
detail in the definition of personality disorders is rigidility and inflexibility of patterns
of thought and action (a good example is compulsive lying -- a defining feature of a sociopath
that distinguishes them from authoritarians) (Wikipedia
) :

Personality disorders form a class of
mental disorders that
are characterized by long-lasting rigid patterns of thought
and actions. Because of the inflexibility and pervasiveness of these
patterns, they can cause serious problems and impairment of functioning for the persons who are
afflicted with these disorders.

Personality disorders are seen by the
American
Psychiatric Association as an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates
markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it.
These patterns are inflexible and pervasive across many situations.
The onset of the pattern can be traced back at least to the beginning of adulthood. To be diagnosed
as a personality disorder, a behavioral pattern must cause significant distress or impairment in
personal, social, and/or occupational situations.

Related term Antisocial personality disorder is defined as:

Antisocial personality disorder (abbreviated APD or ASPD) is a
psychiatricdiagnosis in the
DSM-IV-TR recognizable by the disordered individual's impulsive
behavior, disregard for social norms, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others.

Such people distort and change meaning for the most ordinary social interactions: A simple difference
of opinion, for example, can quickly escalate into a major and violent conflict.

As insightful page The toxic
manager in the office a guide to toxic managers and toxic management in a toxic work environment
states "We've all encountered them. Moody, aggressive, unpredictable, incompetent, always blaming other
people. A compulsive liar with a Jekyll and Hyde nature, the individual, male or female, is always charming
and plausible when management are around." Unpredictable outbursts of hostility, conflicting demands,
inconsistent orders, random decision-making, inability to plan strategically, inability and unwillingness
to communicate and co-operate, obstructive ... the list goes on.

Any psychopath does not see people as valuable, but only tools to be used in his game.
As such they are capable if immense cruelty.

After some conversations with corporate psychopath you feel like you left the ring after facing opponent
twice heavier then you and not playing by the rules. Everything will be your fault. You have a "negative
attitude", you're a "poor performer", you're "not up to the job", and so on. If you get as far as alerting
personnel or human resources management, it'll be a "personality clash". In truth,
this is aprojectionof the psychopaths own negative attitude, poor performance, and incompetence.

If you are targeted by one it is important to understand that that psychopaths completely lack empathy
for other people. That means that their are oblivious to sufferings they inflict. Absolutely oblivious.
They tend to be rigid and inflexible, have hidden agendas, and have an unusually hard time recognizing
or respecting boundaries. They're weighed down by irrational beliefs such as "To be criticized
means I'm a failure" or "If I follow orders, I'm weak". Disturbingly, individuals with personality disorders
not only tend to dismiss the idea that they have a problem, but often see their unpleasant traits as
strengths and take pride in them. For this reason, many such individuals respond poorly to therapy --
if they agree to seek treatment at all.

For example, do you have a manager who focuses so single-mindedly on rules, regulations, and productivity
to the extent that actual real work grinds to a halt? Is she unsatisfied with any solution you proposed,
work compulsively till all hours, avoid making decisions, and insist that her way of doing things is
the only way? If so, your boss may be suffering from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
This is not the same as obsessive-compulsive illness -- you're not likely to see her obsessively
washing her hands. The best defense strategy: find a transfer or a new job. If you need to stay avoid
arguments, keep a low profile, and steer clear of conflicts that you'll never win.

If you think you work for one of these individuals, the authors say,
don't be fooled by "props" like the ready smile and good eye contact. Instead, watch your back. Seriously consider switching jobs. Lock your desk, secure your computer password, keep your
personal life private, and notify your coworkers and supervisors of any inappropriate behavior on the
part of this colleague. As the authors caution, "Anything you say can and will be used against you."

It is very important to keep log of all your boss actions as it helps to see patterns. This one of
few useful advices for anyone who is in danger of being victimized by a white-collar con artist.

Documenting the psychopath behavior in your journal helps to view his behavior in historical perspective:
suddenly you start to see patterns in attacks, outbursts and intimidation tactics used.

Documenting the psychopath behavior in your journal helps
to view his behavior in historical perspective: suddenly you start to see patterns in attacks,
outbursts and intimidation tactics used.

Proper methods are well described in literature for psychological research. Limited amount of materials
related to PIMM can be found at
Documenting Micromanager
Behavior page on this site.

Please note that psychopath in management position almost always have patsies: they try to create
a group of followers organized as cult. Such cults are not religious, it's simply exploitative groups
characterized by high level of manipulation and extreme dependency. So they try to create the situation
what you alone face a group (there is strength in numbers).

The advice "watch your back" is prudent if you report to a psychopath, and one way to do this is
a to keep journal that will help you see patterns that you may overlook otherwise.

Useful tips to documenting your boss behavior can be obtained by watching films that depict a large
variety of psychopaths and allow some generalization based on this experience (which is much better/safer
method to get some level of awareness, then facing one in you own office).

One of the simplest way of documenting behavior is correlating it with the list of traits that we
present below.

Like any other human condition psychopathy can be present in individuals in various degrees. Selection
in corporate environment is such that psychopaths with too pronounced features, especially those who
can't mask them are weeded off or are confined to the lower levels of hierarchy. So in a corporate environment
we face a special "borderline" types with well above average adaptability. They also are not uniform
as group, but still can be singles out by dominant stereotypes of behavior.

There were several attempts to classify corporate psychopaths into various categories. Most are naive
and all (including presented here) are completely unscientific. We know way too little about this condition
to have reliable scientifically based classification. But even unscientific is better then nothing as
at least it provide some framework that help too deal with this phenomenon/

Please be aware, that many of self-help books represent
Cargo Cult Science and vastly underestimate/misinterpret
the danger. That actually is applicable to this page too as by and large it is a summary of available
research interpreted through the prism of personal experience. While the author has training as a psychologist
he never worked in this capacity. It goes without saying that good books on this topic are pretty rare.
I have some book recommendations but they
are of course far from being absolute.

Again this typology and characteristics listed ad defining each type are imprecise and unscientific;
psychopaths are very variable and it is often difficult to fit your particular psychopathic boss into
any of those classes. And you generally should not. This is exercise better reserved for modern "factories
of illusion" (self-help books publishers) who are producing tons of low quality staff each year describing
particular types although they are just facets of a generic psychopathic personality. In no way you
should be blindly trusted either books or Web pages (including this one) in important career-affecting
decisions.

Although you see manifestation of this personality disorder on your own skin,
precise diagnostics is pretty difficult and you need to do your own leg work and
collect evidence to understand what makes particular psychopath tick what are his favorite tactics.
They key characteristic is the desire for domination and control. That's given. That's why there are
often micromanagers.

You probably are better off consulting specialist and asking for a competent advice. At least you
can enroll in community college and take course in criminal psychology: criminals and corporate psychopaths
are just two sides of the same coin. Both this this page and relevant books should all be taken with
a grain of salt. The author have spend more then seven years working as senior research associate in
the psychology but like in programming that was a different area and this experience just ensured the
knowledge of jargon, but does not guarantee talent or insight needed for this area.

Also few people have skills of clinical psychologists to correctly identify often complex blend of
features in toxic manager. But you should try you best and keep log to detect the repetitive patterns.
Mistakes are unavoidable though. For example sometimes it was looks like the manager is a bully, but
more precise analysis of behavior can suggest that you are dealing with paranoid incompetent micromanager
(PIMM) and the most prominent feature is not open aggression (bulling) but deep paranoia and obsessive
control.

Here are categories of behaviors that can you used in documenting psychopath behavior patterns:

Pathological Lying. This is a defining feature of a corporate sociopath.Like spiders
they cannot live without spinninga web of lies, creating complex artificial reality. Usually
can give such authors as Hemingway run for the money in the ability to invent stories. Has no problem
lying coolly and easily "in the eyes" or even under the oath. Sometimes it looks like they cannot
themselves distinguish facts and fiction. It is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent
basis. Talented actors they can create, and get other caught up in a complex "artificial reality"
with realistic but invented details of their biography and abilities. Extremely convincing and able
to pass lie detector tests. Often lie about their academic achievements and pretend to have degrees
that they never obtained. Compulsive, (using which corporate psychopath create "invented past"),
was first described in the medical literature in 1891 by Anton Delbrueck. if has been defined as
"falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, may be extensive and very
complicated, and may manifest over a period of years or even a lifetime."The defining characteristics of
pathological lying
are that:

The stories told are not entirely improbable and often have some element of truth. They
are not a manifestation of
delusion or some broader type of
psychosis: upon confrontation,
the teller can admit them to be untrue, even if unwillingly.

This tendency is compulsive and long lasting; it is not provoked by the immediate situation
or social pressure as much as it is an innate trait of the personality.

There is an internal, not an external, motive for such a behavior: e.g. long lasting extortion
or habitual spousal battery might cause a person to lie repeatedly, without the lying being
a pathological symptom.

The stories told tend toward presenting the liar favorably. For example, the person might
be presented as being extremely devoted to "the cause", super-knowledgeable in some area, has
tremendous success with women/men or having as friends some influential or famous people.

Dominating and expect unconditional surrender. They are very harsh in testing loyalty
from their devotees and expect them to feel guilt for their failings. Expects unconditional
surrender.

Complete, Absolute Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt. A deep seated rage, which is split
off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as
targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end
up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy. Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having
only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. Their skills
are used to exploit, abuse and exert power. Since most normal IT professionals cannot believe their
boss would callously hurt them, they rationalize the behavior as necessary for their (or the group's)
"good" and deny the abuse. When you became aware of the exploitation it really looks like "office
rape" and corresponds to the behavior of serial rapist.

Carefully hidden chronically unstable, antisocial, or socially deviant lifestyle;
often have early behavior problems/juvenile delinquency. Often demonstrateaberrant behaviors
such as cruelty to people or animals, compulsive stealing, etc. Usually has a history of behavioral
difficulties. Ten to "gets by" by conning others. Often has problems in making and keeping friends
due to pathological lying.

Glibness/Superficial Charm. Perfectly able to used superficial charm to confuse and convince
their audience. Easily provide captivating invented stories suitable for the circumstances. Demonstrate
self-confidence. they can . Very good in verbal confrontations, well trained to destroy their critics
verbally or emotionally.

Extremely Manipulative and Conning. Never recognize the rights of others and see their
self-serving behaviors permissible. While they appear to be charming to strangers, yet are covertly
hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They dominate and
humiliate their victims converting them into office slaves.

Grandiose Sense of Self. Feels entitled to certain things as "their legitimate rights."
Craves adulation and attendance. Tend to creates and maintain group polarization, "us-versus-them"
mentality. Systematically works on alienation of subordinates from the rest of the company
and instilling the view of "others" as hostile and threatening.

Shallow, Often Non-genuine Emotions. When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love
and compassion, it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant
matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are
not genuine, neither are their promises.

Need for Stimulation. Corporate psychopaths are not necessary living on the edge like
regular criminals, yet they like testing subordinates reactions with bizarre rules, punishments
and behaviors. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Verbal conflict is what replaces
some of them sexual life.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature. Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions
of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness
in the victim. Try to instill the belief that they are well-connected. Demonstrate no sense of personal
boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

Failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions. Irresponsibility/Unreliability.
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation
they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blame their followers or others outside their
group. Blame reinforces passivity and obedience and produces guilt, shame, terror and conformity
in the followers.

Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity. Women frequently practice office promiscuity
using sex as an instrument to climb the ladder. This is usually kept hidden from all but the inner
circle.

Lack of realistic planning, parasitic lifestyle. Tends to live by present moment, attempt
to steal and provide to superiors as own ideas and achievements of subordinates. Highly sensitive
to their own pain and health.

Other Related Qualities:

Contemptuous of those who seek to understand him. Does not perceive that anything is wrong with
him

Authoritarian, Secretive and Paranoid (ASP complex)

Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations
where tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired. The uniform
goal is cult-style enslavement of his victim(s); Exercises despotic control over every
aspect of his victim's life. Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim

Conventional appearance

Has a psychological need to justify misdeeds and therefore needs his various forms
of affirmation. Promote and maintain cult of personality.

Incapable of real human attachment to another

Unable to feel remorse or guilt

Extreme narcissism and grandiose. May state readily that their goal is to rule the world!!

The first and foremost recommendation is to keep up your guard. Nitpicking may not only drive you
crazy but could be harmful to your career as if you overreact it exposures you to the to the threat
of being fired for insubordination.

Avoid taking the toxic bosses actions personally and remind yourself that you are not stuck in a
hostile work environment. Take actions for self-protection and establish personal boundaries rather
than to change the other person. Remember that all of them are "Mayberry Machiavelli" and are ready
to stub you in the back.

Try to set boundaries, making clear when it's inappropriate for to intrude on your work. You also
may need to remind your boss of your accomplishments if you find an obsessive-compulsive boss is undercutting
your work. You may want to divide up your work, so your obsessive-compulsive boss can obsess freely
over some parts of the job while you can concentrate on the tasks at hand. You can scale down you works
activities and try to attend the university courses at the evening to enhance you marketability at the
job market (which you need to enter sooner or later).

In any case, learning to cope with psychopathic manager is a difficult tasks as many "features" of
this type of persons became known only after painful personal encounters. It is one thing to read the
page like this and another to encounter this animal at the close range. That's why you should stay only
as long as absolutely necessary and should try your best to transfer to another department or other
company. Remember you can't change this type of individual. Among possible defense moves we can mention
to stick to your agenda, documenting every step and pointing abrupt changes of direction as well as
providing feedback about projects you involved with.. Try to avoid getting sucked into his or her unreasonable
demands. You don't want to end up being emotionally blackmailed.

The problem is that "toxic managers" are really toxic: they instantly destroy
trust and tend to infect their departments with bad attitudes. It's really like a disease: they
spread despair, anger and depression, which show up in lackluster work, absenteeism and turnover. They
are also a major course of workplace burnout: toxic burnout. Coping with a toxic boss can take a severe
toll on your life. It is like living with an abusive parent or husband; there are periods of calm where
they are happy and not picking on you, but you always know that at some
point it will start again.

The price of putting up with it is high. Researchers in Finland found that workers who felt they
were being treated fairly on the job had a lower incidence of coronary heart disease, the leading cause
of death in Western societies. [ABC,
Oct. 26, 2005]. Often there is little you can do except to keep your head down and stay away
from that manager as much as possible.

The best is to understand your tradeoffs and work not so much for the company as for improving your
marketability for the next job. Forget about loyalty in such situation: set strict limits for yourself
and stick to them. Stop working overtime, don’t take on extra tasks, never
work through lunch.

Have outside confidant: a person outside the company to listen to you, support you and, ultimately,
to help you get out. The fact that they severely cripple the organization
to which they belong is well known fact and does not require additional commentary.

Toxic behavior of superiors create level of anger when revenge became to sweet and pain that strips
people of their self esteem and that disconnects them from their work too severe. Never go this road.
Still for some people urge of revenge proves irresistible. That's why toxic managers are probably the
leading causes of sabotage in modern organization (competing with outsourcing/Offshoring). "Fish stinks
from the head!" and the higher toxic managers is, the more widespread is the damage he/she causes. Often
large badly managed companies and government agencies attract such managers as due to their incompetence
they simply would not survive out in the startup business community.

The best defense is finding a new, better job. You should start working in this direction
immediately as this increase your psychological comfort. If job market is good it might be easier then
you think.

Psychopathic bosses are really dangerous to your health (being chased by a wolf in a fenced space
is not an experience one can endure for a long time, no matter how fast you can run), but don't struggle
alone. Books, friends, church can help...

Work harassment is a serious problem, severely affecting the lives of those who are exposed
to it. In Sweden, a country with 9 million inhabitants, it is estimated that 100-300 people
commit suicide yearly as a result of harassment by colleagues. Every
6th to 8th suicide is directly related to work harassment [Leymann, 1986]. Work harassment
is thus a form of interpersonal aggression similar to animal affression, which is at least as harmful
as violence in the traditional sense. [
Sex Differences
in Covert Aggression Among Adults ]

It’s difficult and dangerous to fight back against psychopathic manager. Make sure you
get help from people who know about ways of outsmarting them. Indirect measure like "fencing yourself"
(for example enrollment into university courses to improve your qualification) and preparation for
surprise attacks (especially during annual reviews, they love to get a victim unprepared and crush
weak, badly organized resistance).

Maintaining a log and buying a couple of books and systematically studying the issue might
help to fight psychopath. This is not a guarantee as many of such books are junk. But with your
personal log even junk book can give some help: especially helpful is the ability to detect the
typical tricks; that significantly diminishes the level of stress. Remember that arsenal of "dirty
tricks" and attack method used by psychopath is repetitive and as soon as you see the same trick
or attack method used again you can improve your response. Sometimes dramatically.

Try to document the behavior of the psychopath and share the problem with somebody whom you
trust outside the office environment. Just periodic discussion of your records improves understanding
of the problem and your preparedness to dirty tricks and intimidation

Although everyone’s psychopathic manager is different on the surface, their tricks are not.
All of them are using fear and anxiety to make you feel bad. Learn typical patterns of attack both
from experience and literature and soon you will notice that you recognize them. Here having daily
log helps immensely as the ability going back and analyze previous similar episodes speed up learning.

Try to set red flags for upper management and HR indirectly, otherwise be ready that your boss
will retaliate against you.

Year questionnaires should be used to inform upper management about the problem.

Anonymous hotlines and email are helpful, as you can ask somebody to read you message or use
free anonymisers to send complains.

Expect you WEB browsing patterns be scrutinized, unless the company has strict policy preventing
managers from accessing this information without HR approval. Be especially careful protecting your
job searches independently whether you are considering internal transferee or moving to the other
company.

If you need to speak by phone at the cubicle remember that walls have ears. In somebody called
you and the call in sensitive, excuse yourself and call back later using cell phone or from a conference
room. Never talk to recruiters from your cubicle.

Create a plan to counter the damage to self-esteem:

It's cool to be frugal. Create a war chest as soon as possible.
Like state who anticipate attack your first snd foremost tak is mobilise all respources to withstand
it as long as possible and give the best fight possible. Even if you lose some money
leaving the current job and finding other job will be as much pain as staying on the present, the
mere elimination of stress might pay off in health benefits and part of the loss can be compensated
by more frugal life. It's actually
cool to be more frugal
as youth trends (and gas prices) in USA demonstrate...

Start working on relevant certifications.

Attend night classes in college.

Intensify your job search, including borderline use of facilities
of the current employee. This is a fight and good moment for a counterattack might
came later, if you demonstrate sufficient endurance. Never take the decision to change job "on-the
spot" no matter how humiliating the experience is. The best revenge is a better position in a different
company, not the questionable pleasure of being unemployed.

Psychopathic bosses are incurable. This condition manifest itself in adolescence as cruelty
to animals. Later it develops into full-blown psychopathy that might have some bio-chemical marks
in the brain. Lack of feelings and remorse for actions toward humans might have different degrees
so this is not black and white condition. You might consider them as a predators of human species
and you need to be on guard as they are by definition manipulators who try to exploit whose who
get into their net.

Psychopathic bosses have significant differences from the normal human beings. What is
important they see the world differently and interpret many innocent for normal people patterns
as threatening. Absurd reactions/over-reactions should be expected as they are "not normal" in a
very profound way. Also they consider satisfying of their wishes to be of primary importance and
do not care about human costs.

World is far from being perfect and those predators are natural inhabitants of human jungles.
This trivial general observation actually can really help. Consider dealing with those predators
as a test of your maturity that God imposed on you in his infinite wisdom. That might help to withstanding
psychopathic boss easier. That also helps to treat each other more realistically and study then
as strange dangerous and somewhat exotic animals (which they are). And studying them and keeping
a log of your observation helps to deal with them in more psychologically mature way. First of all
like any predators they lake to attack victim from a cover relying of surprise effect. Their reliance
of surprise effect (for example in scheduling your annual review) can be taken into account and
somewhat resisted. Related coping strategies might include minimizing unrealistic expectations,
viewing disagreements less personally (again those predators are more an animals then you might
think), holding grudges more briefly, etc.

Any psychopath does not see people as valuable or as a human being, but only as a prey or
as tools to be used in his game. As such they are capable if immense cruelty. They also always
rely on deception. Lying is their second nature and they create an artificial biography faking their
past. They can also be tremendously seductive and not only in purely sexual terms (in classic roles
of Don Juan or "femme la fatale").

Aggression in office environment is typically indirect. That's why
female psychopaths are probably the most dangerous type of corporate psychopaths as they prefer
and excel in indirect intimidation. Woman inhumanity to women in the working place
often exceed anything done by men. A female psychopath often treat her female subordinate as if
they are despised indentured servants -- hers to humiliate.

The power of psychopathic bosses comes from the way they can isolate you, intimidate you
and/or can make you feel bad if you don’t give in to demands. Please note that cliques are female
instrument of bulling. Cliques offer security to those who conforms and insecurity to those who
don't. Indirect bulling can be achieved via exclusion from a peer group. Female gossip server the
same goals.

Although there isn't one "right" way to handle CFHs, there are some ways that are likely to
make the situation worse rather than better. Here are a few tips to avoid escalation:

Avoid "you" statements ("You're not making any sense." "You are the one with the
problem." "You need to suck it up and stop complaining about everything."). Instead, use "I"
or "we" statements ("I don't understand what you're trying to say." "It seems like we have a
problem." "How can we work this out?").

Avoid emotion. Keep your voice soft and your tone even. It's hard to maintain a high
level of emotion when the person you're interacting with consistently maintains a calm,
unemotional tone (although some of the best can do it - see discussion on page 2 about UCFHs).

Avoid sarcasm.

Avoid defensiveness.

Avoid engagement. If the anger, drama, or whatever craziness is going on doesn't subside,
politely disengage. It's hard enough going against your instinct to not defend yourself when
the attack first starts. The longer the attack lasts (especially when you're trying your best
to diffuse it), the harder it will be to stay calm and unemotional. So if your best efforts
don't diffuse the situation, say something like, "I'm having a hard time listening to [or
understanding ]
what you're saying when you're [yelling, sobbing, glaring, etc.]. Maybe we can try to resolve
this later when the emotions aren't so high." Then, walk away.

The high maintenance man or woman is the layman's term for someone with a Cluster B
(antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, or borderline) personality disorder or a subclinical
version with those traits.

Manipulation (which is implied in the term "high maintenance" ) comes in many forms: There
are whiners, bullies, the borderliners, and our main object of interest -- the sociopaths. Korin
Miller gives s ome potentially useful advice of dealing with high maintenance drama queens at
work... T hrowing a fit should get her nowhere .

You need also to understand the strengths and weaknesses or your own behavior (and analyze it
via diary) so that you can adapt your communication style when necessary. Anticipate and be
prepared. That greatly helps not to react too emotionally. Don't take anything personally.
Consider such behaviour as a you view a bad weather. Drama queen behavior is pretty stereotypical
and can be studied via sample of Netflix movies. Practice your responses.

Such people are not always low performers. More often they are high performers at the
workplace.

Much depends of the "social order," that is, to what extent the society order social
relations to a benefit narrow interests of the elite and how individuals are socialized into the
ongoing social structure. Neoliberalism with its "greed is good" mantra is unhealthy society.
That's for sure. It actually discourages bonds to society which prevent anti-social or openly
delinquent behavior in humans. George Vincent, writing in the first volume of the American
Journal of Sociology, defined social control as ". . . the art of combining social
forces so as to give society at least a trend toward an ideal" (1896:490). if the ideal is "homo
homily lupus est" like it is under neoliberalism the society, or organization/firm gradually
self-destruct.

There is a strong correlation between dysfunctional social institutions, decreased
relationships to society and the level of delinquency, especially adolescent delinquency. If
adolescence is viewed as part of a maturation process with the end goal being the integration of
the youth into adult social roles, then in a dysfunctional society likelihood that a youth will
become involved with the criminal justice system dramatically increase.

She always asks you to grab her coffee (and doesn't pay you back), and loves to
monopolize your time.

How to Deal: Next time she asks you to get something for her (coffee, lunch, whatever), just
"forget" to do it or tell her you unfortunately don't have the time. If she keeps swinging by
your desk for hour-long "chats," start telling her you really have to get back to an assignment
and add, "if we could finish this later, that would be great." Eventually, she'll get the
point.

She's obsessed with being the center of attentionand freaks when she isn't.

How to Deal: Sure, it's annoying especially when she can't even deal when your guy's parents
ask you about how work is going but it's in your best interests to be nice to her. So throw her
a bone. The easiest way: Like her attention-seeking Facebook posts. That way, you can roll your
eyes while you do it, and she'll never know.

She's demanding of your time and has a meltdown if you can't accommodate her.

How to Deal: Sit down with her and tell her that, while you love her, you can't be available
to her 24/7, 365. Ask your mom how often she thinks is reasonable for you two to hang out or
catch up, and then work with that. Maybe all she wants is a regular "date" with you. Once you
decide on something, make her stick to it. So, if she starts harassing you about not being able
to hang out on a Monday, tell her you're busy, but you'll see her at your regular Thursday
night dinner.

She texts and calls you like crazy, and says you're a bad friend if you don't drop
everything when she needs you (which is pretty much every day).

How to Deal: It's time to slowly get rid of her which, we know can be tricky when she's in
your circle of friends. Whatever you do, don't respond when she gets crazy over text. If she
calls you a bad friend, tell her that her behavior is pushing you away or just ignore her
altogether. You don't need someone like that in your life.

She needs constant hand-holding (especially after work hours) and can't cope when she
doesn't get it.

How to Deal: Our advice: Start looking for a new job. She won't change the way she treats
you, and unfortunately, she's calling the shots right now. In the meantime, tell her you don't
get work email on your phone. She'll have to think twice about actually calling you at 10 p.m.
vs. firing off a demanding email.

The high maintenance man or woman is the layman's term for someone with a Cluster B
(antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, or borderline) personality disorder or a subclinical
version with those traits.

Notable quotes:

"... The 5 second solution: "How do you intend to solve that problem?" Teach your employees to come to you with ideas and solutions for your feedback, but that your door and inbox are not open for dropping their challenges into your lap. ..."

"... The 5 second solution: React to the bigger issue at hand, to avoid being pulled into the daily tug and pull of keeping an oversized ego at bay. David Williams outlines four steps for taming an ego here . ..."

"... The 5 second solution: Teach your team to avoid "upward delegation" – that their responsibility is to handle their job, not to hand pieces of it back to the boss, or heaven forbid, to the client. ..."

"... The 5 second solution: As a leader, you do individuals locked into the "blame game" a favor by not playing into the negativity dialogue. "I'm sorry that happened. But you're here now – we appreciate and respect you – and we have work to do." ..."

"... The 5 second solution: Don't provide one. Listen freely to collaboration and ideas -- but avoid feeding someone's need to "make the rounds" at the office to mire in the anguishing complaints about their challenging tasks and accounts. ..."

"... The 5 Second solution: let the drama begin and end in HR. In the agency world, one individual became so adept at working the system, even a day off required a phone appointment with HR to "hash out a few issues." It was a wake up call for us all – for a chronically high maintenance person, even their days away from the office can produce a negative energy drain. Let HR handle the situation–but when someone becomes a near full time issue, it's a sure sign their high maintenance is an issue the company will need to address. ..."

"... The 5 Second solution: Discipline yourself to be a company that covers its own expenses, and spend only what the business can afford to pay for in cash. The environment of discipline as opposed to the perpetual anxiety for "more" can carry over to help employees learn to manage their personal expenses better as well. In any case, work to prevent employees from making the office a perpetual sounding board for their personal "woes." ..."

"... The 5 Second solution: To keep these behaviors from derailing their company culture, the best example must come from the top. A leader who avoids flaunting material status and is willing to do for the company what is expected of others does a great deal to enhance the working culture for all. ..."

"... The 5 second solution: Learn to set and maintain appropriate boundaries with these personality types. As a reminder to all in a company, great people talk about ideas -- but small people focus their talk on other people or "things". Change the subject as many times as needed until the idea of a higher level of thinking and acting can thrive. ..."

"... The 5 Second solution: Generally, in a case like this, there is direct intervention required. Remind the individual that if they can't respect the boss and someone must leave generally, it won't be the boss. Find a constructive way to address what ails you–change the trend for the better–get along–or consider a move or a change for the long term. But in the world of business, undermining the boss will hurt the perpetrator far more than the target, even if the resentment is justified. ..."

David Williams'
Confessions of a High Maintenance CEO is making me laugh (somewhat in humor, but also in
guilt.) Most CEOs are high maintenance. However, most every business has been riddled at one
time or another with the issues of chronically (and negatively) high maintenance people at
work.

These situations are not the ebb and flow of creative energy, but the result of unhealthy
people producing a toxic energy drain. High maintenance people can also be overwhelming as
friends. Ironically, their tendency to lose friends contributes even further to their
inclination to latch onto "people targets" at work.

Courtesy of columnist Ayanna
Guyhto , here are the 13 unlucky signs of negative high maintenance followed by a few of
the methods you can use to reduce the drain of "people debt" on your company's energy level and
bottom line:

1 -They have urgent "needs." To a high maintenance personality, everything is urgent. Every
piece of email needs to be copied to someone in authority and every action needs to be passed
by the boss before they proceed.

The 5 second solution: "How do you intend to solve that problem?" Teach your employees
to come to you with ideas and solutions for your feedback, but that your door and inbox are
not open for dropping their challenges into your lap.

2 – They have a sense of entitlement. Everyone deserves to be treated with equal
respect. The high maintenance individual will expect more. When this happens, there's generally
an unhealthy level of ego at play.

The 5 second solution: React to the bigger issue at hand, to avoid being pulled into
the daily tug and pull of keeping an oversized ego at bay. David Williams outlines four steps for taming an
ego
here .

3 – They could be self-sufficient. But they're not. The task could be as simple as
looking up an email address, retrieving a file, or looking up a bit of needed information over
the web. But this person feels more engaged and important by making continual requests for
service from others, including the boss.

The 5 second solution: Teach your team to avoid "upward delegation" – that their
responsibility is to handle their job, not to hand pieces of it back to the boss, or heaven
forbid, to the client.

4 – They cling to stories of personal wrongs from the past. The high maintenance
individual has a difficult time moving past real or imagined wrongs of the past. The faults of
others become a script that plays over and over as justification for extra support, lower work
expectations, or greater entitlements now.

The 5 second solution: As a leader, you do individuals locked into the "blame game" a
favor by not playing into the negativity dialogue. "I'm sorry that happened. But you're here
now – we appreciate and respect you – and we have work to do."

5 – They talk. A lot. The high maintenance person thrives on attention. They have a
continual need for others to serve as their sounding boards. While discussion and brainstorming
is necessary and healthy, high maintenance people feel the need to use their co-workers as ad
hoc life advisors and coaches; however they have little desire or motivation to actually hear
and take the advice they receive. Mostly, they crave a listening ear.

The 5 second solution: Don't provide one. Listen freely to collaboration and ideas --
but avoid feeding someone's need to "make the rounds" at the office to mire in the anguishing
complaints about their challenging tasks and accounts.

6 – They are seldom satisfied. High maintenance people will see the flaws in every
situation. Even when they've been given extra care and attention, they will invariably find
something wrong with the solution or service they've received, or will feel the need to ask for
an additional "adjustment" in order to gratify their need to feel validated and served.

7 – They are high-strung. Not all high-strung people are high maintenance. But the
person with excessive needs will be persistently vocal and anxious about the things they
require. Again – it's a dependency you shouldn't encourage or feed.

8 – They live in a state of perpetual drama. If you are around a high maintenance
person for an extended period of time, you will observe frequent periods of meltdown during the
course of the day. Every small inconvenience or mistake becomes a crisis. They will learn to
work the internal HR system heavily at every turn.

The 5 Second solution: let the drama begin and end in HR. In the agency world, one
individual became so adept at working the system, even a day off required a phone appointment
with HR to "hash out a few issues." It was a wake up call for us all – for a
chronically high maintenance person, even their days away from the office can produce a
negative energy drain. Let HR handle the situation–but when someone becomes a near full
time issue, it's a sure sign their high maintenance is an issue the company will need to
address.

9 – They handle money poorly. Regardless of the economy or circumstance, high
maintenance people are perpetually in debt. No matter their income, their living expenditures
and needs are invariably more. They expend an exceptional amount of stress and energy dealing
with past due accounts and the perpetual juggling act to use this month's income to cover last
month's bills.

The 5 Second solution: Discipline yourself to be a company that covers its own
expenses, and spend only what the business can afford to pay for in cash. The environment of
discipline as opposed to the perpetual anxiety for "more" can carry over to help employees
learn to manage their personal expenses better as well. In any case, work to prevent
employees from making the office a perpetual sounding board for their personal
"woes."

10 – They place a high importance on material status. The entitlement aspect of high
maintenance people leads them to be keenly focused on the belongings or the status of others as
well. This trait can infect the highest people in the organization, such as the CEO who demands
that every company event include the provision of free upgrades and presidential suites at no
additional cost. Ironically, the focus on material possessions and status is actually the sign
of insecurity and of a low self-esteem.

The 5 Second solution: To keep these behaviors from derailing their company culture,
the best example must come from the top. A leader who avoids flaunting material status and is
willing to do for the company what is expected of others does a great deal to enhance the
working culture for all.

11 – They are obsessed with details–theirs and yours. They are highly focused on
the too-much-information and none-of-your-business particulars of your life and also of
theirs.

The 5 second solution: Learn to set and maintain appropriate boundaries with these
personality types. As a reminder to all in a company, great people talk about ideas -- but
small people focus their talk on other people or "things". Change the subject as many times
as needed until the idea of a higher level of thinking and acting can thrive.

12 – They seem "unsettled." The high maintenance person is constantly ill at ease,
buying, altering or discarding possessions and complaining about their work or living
conditions. The details that are non-issues to others are insurmountable hurdles to them.
Happiness perpetually evades them.

13 – They resent authority are often critical of others. It is extremely difficult for
these individuals to respect authority or to see the bigger picture. Instead, they hold fast to
their opinions of the support they need and the credit they should receive in order to fulfill
their assignments. Passive aggressive behavior is paramount (undermining the boss by spreading
unrest or ill will – often veiling the bad behavior in an aura of superiority or
nobility).

The 5 Second solution: Generally, in a case like this, there is direct intervention
required. Remind the individual that if they can't respect the boss and someone must leave
generally, it won't be the boss. Find a constructive way to address what ails
you–change the trend for the better–get along–or consider a move or a
change for the long term. But in the world of business, undermining the boss will hurt the
perpetrator far more than the target, even if the resentment is justified.

By now you should be detecting a pattern of traits so apparent they are even humorous.

As an employer, however, I'm not laughing -- I'm recognizing that much of the impetus lies
with the boss or employer to vet prospective employees for emotional maturity (what author Dan
Goleman refers to as "Emotional IQ") in making great hires. Alan Hall gives great advice on hiring as well, in his
Forbes article and eBook the
7 C's: How to Find and Hire Great Employees .

Responsibility lies with the company to create and reinforce a positive culture. Do you have
a working environment that allows bad behaviors to take hold and fester? Do you actively feed
and reward the positive behaviors? Do you set a good example yourself?

If your company is already infected, you should deal with the situation directly. In some
cases, you may succeed in helping these individuals to find their better nature and make a
positive change. Nothing is more rewarding than turning a negative pattern around. However, in
some cases the toxicity may be so deeply embedded that the only way to deal effectively is to
simply refuse to engage. You will need to be firm. You may even need to part ways.

Have you had this experience? I imagine the answer is "yes." I look forward to hearing your
stories and hearing about your success.

A sociopath can be very good at reading and manipulating others. Having a theory of mind is
quite distinct from having empathy, and having empathy is quite distinct from using it
pervasively to guide personal/social/political life.

The simple, publically acceptable, and eventually inexpensive and convenient solution to
90% of all these problems. Technological screening of persons in positions of power for
excessive psychopathic, deceptive, and manipulative personalities. If put on cell phones as
aps, say involving cell phone aps of retinal scanning, heart rate changes, etc., even
prospective spouses, business partners, etc could be evaluated. "The Darkness hates the Light
because the Light exposes the Darkness for it's evil deeds." So let's do some exposing!

Highly recommended!

Notable quotes:

"... Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do. ..."

"... A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like. ..."

"... Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction. ..."

"... Children who experience emotional neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement. ..."

"... It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system. ..."

"... Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks in favour of market competition ..."

"... In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments) and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity ..."

"... All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs. That's where this very paper comes in ..."

"... The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned living in village communities ..."

"... Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy. ..."

"... My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices. We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1% very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too many ideas with each other. ..."

"... According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose. ..."

"... multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism. The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor. ..."

"... I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our fair share of resources. ..."

"... Has it occurred to you that the collapse in societal values has allowed 'neo-liberalism' to take hold? ..."

"... No. It has been the concentrated propaganda of the "free" press. Rupert Murdoch in particular, but many other well-funded organisations working in the background over 50 years. They are winning. ..."

"... We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy". Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down from stress, and giving up on a family life. ..."

"... You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial one. ..."

"... As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places, riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems of violence, crime and suicide. ..."

"... The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old or dead. We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher, Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand. Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism. ..."

"... Criticism of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon, yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced neo liberalism. ..."

"... We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes, have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods. At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything that goes wrong will always be someone else fault. ..."

"... We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment, but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our birthday! ..."

"... Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system we are subject to. ..."

"... We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe the insecurity we feel plays a part in this. ..."

"... We have become so disconnected from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life. I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on my table so everything else was totally neglected. ..."

"... We need a radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British comedy is on the decline. ..."

"... Quality of life is far more important than GDP I agree but it is also far more important than inequality. ..."

"... Thatcher was only responsible for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing ahead around the world. ..."

"... Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly, life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives. ..."

"... Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution, but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because that explains what is going on. ..."

"... Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get in their way. ..."

"... . Data suggests that inequality has widened massively over the last 30 years ( https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/infographic-income-inequality-uk ) - as has social mobility ( https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts ). Homelessness has risen substantially since 1979. ..."

"... As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their colleagues socially . ..."

"... A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick ..."

"... Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed. This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the same ie human suffering. ..."

"... "Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use, obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty of the people would require. And so on. ..."

"... There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart. It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976) may have been influential in creating that climate. ..."

"... I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. ..."

"... The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. ..."

"... Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes from the things you do. ..."

"... Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization. The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology is one of the tools. No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed a quasi existence. ..."

"... Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive of everyone else. ..."

"... There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest' is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies, state involvement, militias. ..."

"... Furthermore, a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something to aspire to? ..."

"... Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth protecting. ..."

"... Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a company'. ..."

What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental
illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders,
self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest,
catastrophic figures for children's mental health in England reflect a global
crisis.

There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to
me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial
mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled
apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology.
Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere
we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme
individualism.

In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school,
at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two
feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment
is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing
ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to
economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations
as real opportunities contract.

Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of
isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed
all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and
drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and
to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.

As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women
routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer.
Some phones, using their "beauty" settings, do it for you without asking; now
you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia:
a war of everyone against themselves.

Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely
to quantify our social standing

Is it any wonder, in these lonely inner worlds, in which touching has been
replaced by retouching, that young women are drowning in mental distress?
A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and
24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect
26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like.

If social rupture is not treated as seriously as broken limbs, it is because
we cannot see it. But neuroscientists can. A series of fascinating papers suggest
that social pain and physical pain are processed by the same neural circuits.
This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact
of breaking social bonds without the words we use to denote physical pain and
injury. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical
pain. This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is
a powerful analgesic. Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress
of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug
addiction.

Experiments summarised in the journal Physiology & Behaviour last month suggest
that, given a choice of physical pain or isolation, social mammals will choose
the former. Capuchin monkeys starved of both food and contact for 22 hours will
rejoin their companions before eating. Children who experience emotional
neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences
than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as
it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an
attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not
as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the
most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement.

It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might
be. Survival among social mammals is greatly enhanced when they are strongly
bonded with the rest of the pack. It is the isolated and marginalised animals
that are most likely to be picked off by predators, or to starve. Just as physical
pain protects us from physical injury, emotional pain protects us from social
injury. It drives us to reconnect. But many people find this almost impossible.

It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression,
suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising
to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has
a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears
to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances
production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.

Studies in both animals and humans suggest a reason for comfort eating: isolation
reduces impulse control, leading to obesity. As those at the bottom of the socioeconomic
ladder are the most likely to suffer from loneliness, might this provide one
of the explanations for the strong link between low economic status and obesity?

Anyone can see that something far more important than most of the issues
we fret about has gone wrong. So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming
frenzy of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain? Should this question not burn the lips of everyone in public
life?

There are some wonderful charities doing what they can to fight this tide,
some of which I am going to be working with as part of my loneliness project.
But for every person they reach, several others are swept past.

This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger:
the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain,
the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous.
We stand together or we fall apart.

Well its a bit of a stretch blaming neoliberalism for creating loneliness.
Yet it seems to be the fashion today to imagine that the world we live in
is new...only created just years ago. And all the suffering that we see
now never existed before. Plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social
phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness never happened in
the past, because everything was bright and shiny and world was good.

Regrettably history teaches us that suffering and deprivation have dogged
mankind for centuries, if not tens of thousands of years. That's what we
do; survive, persist...endure. Blaming 'neoliberalism' is a bit of cop-out.
It's the human condition man, just deal with it.

Some of the connections here are a bit tenuous, to say the least, including
the link to political ideology. Economic liberalism is usually accompanied
with social conservatism, and vice versa. Right wing ideologues are more
likely to emphasize the values of marriage and family stability, while left
wing ones are more likely to favor extremes of personal freedom and reject
those traditional structures that used to bind us together.

You're a little confused there in your connections between policies, intentions
and outcomes. Nevertheless, Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly
aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks
in favour of market competition.

In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced
social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments)
and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity.

Economic and social liberalism go hand in hand in the West. No matter
who's in power, the establishment pushes both but will do one or the other
covertly.

All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized
and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're
afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs.
That's where this very paper comes in.

The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned
living in village communities. Over the ensuing approx 250 years we
abandoned geographically close relationships with extended families, especially
post WW2. Underlying economic structures both capitalist and marxist dissolved
relationships that we as communal primates evolved within. Then accelerate
this mess with (anti-) social media the last 20 years along with economic
instability and now dissolution of even the nuclear family (which couldn't
work in the first place, we never evolved to live with just two parents
looking after children) and here we have it: Mass mental illness. Solution?
None. Just form the best type of extended community both within and outside
of family, be engaged and generours with your community hope for the best.

Indeed, Industrialisation of our pre-prescribed lifestyle is a huge factor.
In particular, our food, it's low quality, it's 24 hour avaliability, it's
cardboard box ambivalence, has caused a myriad of health problems. Industrialisation
is about profit for those that own the 'production-line' & much less about
the needs of the recipient.

It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated
with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception
of threat.

Yes, although there is some question of which order things go in. A supportive
social network is clearly helpful, but it's hardly a simple cause and effect.
Levels of different mental health problems appear to differ widely across
societies just in Europe, and it isn't particularly the case that more capitalist
countries have greater incidence than less capitalist ones.

You could just as well blame atheism. Since the rise of neo-liberalism
and drop in church attendance track each other pretty well, and since for
all their ills churches did provide a social support group, why not blame
that?

While attending a church is likely to alleviate loneliness, atheism doesn't
expressly encourage limiting social interactions and selfishness. And of
course, reduced church attendance isn't exactly the same as atheism.

Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about
reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons
that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy.

So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?

My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we
are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the
choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices.
We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically
greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1%
very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too
many ideas with each other.

We as individuals are offered the 'choice' of consumption as an alternative
to the devastating ennui engendered by powerlessness. It's no choice at
all of course, because consumption merely enriches the 1% and exacerbates
our powerlessness. That was the whole point of my post.

The 'choice' to consume is never collectively exercised as you suggest.
Sadly. If it was, 'we' might be able to organise ourselves into doing something
about it.

According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse
they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness
which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose.

Well, yes, but multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism.
The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business
owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor.

Multiculturalism isn't the only thing destroying social cohesion, too.
It was being destroyed long before the recent surges of immigrants. It was
reported many times in the 1980's in communities made up of only one culture.
In many ways, it is being used as the obvious distraction from all the other
ways Fundamentalist Free Marketers wreck live for many.

This post perhaps ranges too widely to the point of being vague and general,
and leading Monbiot to make some huge mental leaps, linking loneliness to
a range of mental and physical problems without being able to explain, for
example, the link between loneliness and obesity and all the steps in-between
without risking derailment into a side issue.

I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as
a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part
of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against
one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to
keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our
fair share of resources.

Are you familiar with the term 'Laughter is the best medicine'? Well, it's
true. When you laugh, your brain releases endorphins, yeah? Your stress
hormones are reduced and the oxygen supply to your blood is increased, so...

We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy".
Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults
working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their
elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down
from stress, and giving up on a family life.

Impertinent managers ban their staff from office relationships, as company
policy, because the company is more important than its staff's wellbeing.

Companies hand out "free" phones that allow managers to harrass staff
for work out of hours, on the understanding that they will be sidelined
if thy don't respond.

And the wellbeing of "the economy" is of course far more important than
whether the British people actually want to merge into a European superstate.
What they want is irrelevant.

That nasty little scumbag George Osborne was the apotheosis of this ideology,
but he was abetted by journalists who report any rise in GDP as "good" -
no matter how it was obtained - and any "recession" to be the equivalent
of a major natural disaster.

If we go on this way, the people who suffer the most will be the rich,
because it will be them swinging from the lamp-posts, or cowering in gated
communities that they dare not leave (Venezuela, South Africa). Those riots
in London five years ago were a warning. History is littered with them.

You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every
interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial
one. If this results in loneliness then that's certainly a downside
- but the upside is that billions have been lifted out of absolute poverty
worldwide by 'Neoliberalism'.

Mr Monbiot creates a compelling argument that we should end 'Neoliberalism'
but he is very vague about what should replace it other than a 'different
worldview'. Destruction is easy, but creation is far harder.

As a retired teacher it grieves me greatly to see the way our education
service has become obsessed by testing and assessment. Sadly the results
are used not so much to help children learn and develop, but rather as a
club to beat schools and teachers with. Pressurised schools produce pressurised
children. Compare and contrast with education in Finland where young people
are not formally assessed until they are 17 years old. We now assess toddlers
in nursery schools.
SATs in Primary schools had children concentrating on obscure grammatical
terms and usage which they will never ever use again. Pointless and counter-productive.
Gradgrind values driving out the joy of learning.
And promoting anxiety and mental health problems.

It is all the things you describe, Mr Monbiot, and then some. This dystopian
hell, when anything that did work is broken and all things that have never
worked are lined up for a little tinkering around the edges until the camouflage
is good enough to kid people it is something new. It isn't just neoliberal
madness that has created this, it is selfish human nature that has made
it possible, corporate fascism that has hammered it into shape. and an army
of mercenaries who prefer the take home pay to morality. Crime has always
paid especially when governments are the crooks exercising the law.

The value of life has long been forgotten as now the only thing that
matters is how much you can be screwed for either dead or alive. And yet
the Trumps, the Clintons, the Camerons, the Johnsons, the Merkels, the Mays,
the news media, the banks, the whole crooked lot of them, all seem to believe
there is something worth fighting for in what they have created, when painfully
there is not. We need revolution and we need it to be lead by those who
still believe all humanity must be humble, sincere, selfless and most of
all morally sincere. Freedom, justice, and equality for all, because the
alternative is nothing at all.

Ive long considered neo-liberalism as the cause of many of our problems,
particularly the rise in mental health problems, alienation and loneliness.

As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and
fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different
perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological
level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and
large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries
arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places,
riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems
of violence, crime and suicide.

The worst thing is that the evidence shows it doesn't work. Not one of
the privatisations in this country have worked. All have been worse than
what they've replaced, all have cost more, depleted the treasury and led
to massive homelessness, increased mental health problems with the inevitable
financial and social costs, costs which are never acknowledged by its adherents.

Put crudely, the more " I'm alright, fuck you " attitude is fostered,
the worse societies are. Empires have crashed and burned under similar attitudes.

The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old
or dead.
We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our
more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher,
Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand.
Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can
be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism.

I never understood how the collapse of world finance, resulted in a right
wing resurgence in the UK and the US. The Tea Party in the US made the absurd
claim that the failure of global finance was not due to markets being fallible,
but because free markets had not been enforced citing Fanny Mae and Freddie
Mac as their evidence and of Bill Clinton insisting on more poor and black
people being given mortgages.

I have a terrible sense that it will not go quietly, there will be massive
global upheavals as governments struggle deal with its collapse.

I have never really agreed with GM - but this article hits the nail on the
head.

I think there are a number of aspects to this:

The internet. The being in constant contact, our lives mapped and
our thoughts analysed - we can comment on anything (whether informed or
total drivel) and we've been fed the lie that our opinion is is right and
that it matters) Ive removed fscebook and twitter from my phone, i have
never been happier

Rolling 24 hour news. That is obsessed with the now, and consistently
squeezes very complex issues into bite sized simple dichotomies. Obsessed
with results and critical in turn of everyone who fails to feed the machine

The increasing slicing of work into tighter and slimmer specialisms,
with no holistic view of the whole, this forces a box ticking culture. "Ive
stamped my stamp, my work is done" this leads to a lack of ownership of
the whole. PIP assessments are an almost perfect example of this - a box
ticking exercise, designed by someone who'll never have to go through it,
with no flexibility to put the answers into a holistic context.

Our education system is designed to pass exams and not prepare for
the future or the world of work - the only important aspect being the compilation
of next years league tables and the schools standings. This culture is neither
healthy no helpful, as students are schooled on exam technique in order
to squeeze out the marks - without putting the knowledge into a meaningful
and understandable narrative.

Apologies for the long post - I normally limit myself to a trite insulting
comment :) but felt more was required in this instance.

Overall, I agree with your points. Monbiot here adopts a blunderbuss approach
(competitive self-interest and extreme individualism; "brutal" education,
employment social security; consumerism, social media and vanity). Criticism
of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the
existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems
to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon,
yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular
to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced
neo liberalism. So, when Monbiot's rhetoric rises:

"So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?"

because of the lies that are being sold.
We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes,
have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods.
At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities
have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything
that goes wrong will always be someone else fault.

We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment,
but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled
to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our
birthday!

I share Monbiots pain here. But rather than get a sense of perspective
- the answer is often "More public money and counseling"

George Monbiot has struck a nerve.
They are there every day in my small town local park: people, young and
old, gender and ethnically diverse, siting on benches for a couple of hours
at a time.

They have at least one thing in common.

They each sit alone, isolated in their own thoughts..

But many share another bond: they usually respond to dogs, unconditional
in their behaviour patterns towards humankind.

Trite as it may seem, this temporary thread of canine affection breaks the
taboo of strangers
passing by on the other side.
Conversations, sometimes stilted, sometimes deeper and more meaningful,
ensue as dog walkers become a brief daily healing force in a fractured world
of loneliness.
It's not much credit in the bank of sociability.
But it helps.

Trite as it may seem from the outside, their interaction with the myriad
pooches regularly walk

Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to
humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that
what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system
we are subject to.

If you don't work hard, you will be a loser, don't look out of the window
day dreaming you lazy slacker. Get productive, Mr Burns millions need you
to work like a machine or be replaced by one.

Good article. You´re absoluately right. And the deeper casue is this: separation
from God. If we don´t fight our way back to God, individually and collectively,
things are going to get a lot worse. With God, loneliness doesn´t exist.
I encourage anyone and everyone to start talking to Him today and invite
Him into your heart and watch what starts to happen.

Religion divides not brings people together. Only when you embrace all humanity
and ignore all gods will you find true happiness. The world and the people
in it are far more inspiring when you contemplate the lack of any gods.
The fact people do amazing things without needing the promise of heaven
or the threat of hell - that is truly moving.

I see what you're saying but I read 'love' instead of God. God is too religious
which separates and divides ("I'm this religion and my god is better than
yours" etc etc). I believe that George is right in many ways in that money
is very powerful on it's impact on our behavior (stress, lack etc) and
therefore our lives. We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe
the insecurity we feel plays a part in this.

We have become so disconnected
from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced
periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think
about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life.
I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on
my table so everything else was totally neglected.

When I moved house to
move in with family and wasn't expected to pay rent, though I offered, all
that dissatisfaction and undealt with stuff came spilling out and I realised
I'd had no time for any real safe care above the very basics and that was
not a good place to be. I put myself into therapy for a while and started
to look after myself and things started to change. I hope to never go back
to that kind of position but things are precarious financially and the field
I work in isn't well paid but it makes me very happy which I realise now
is more important.

Neo-liberalism has a lot to answer for in bringing misery to our lives and
accelerating the demise of the planet but I find it not guilty on this one. The current trends as to how people perceive themselves (what you've
got rather than who you are) and the increasing isolation in our cities
started way before the neo-liberals. It is getting worse though and on balance social media is making us more
connected but less social. Share

The way that the left keeps banging on about neoliberalism is half of what
makes them such a tough sell electorally. Just about nobody knows what neoliberalism
is, and literally nobody self identifies as a neoliberal. So all this moaning
and wailing about neoliberalism comes across as a self absorbed, abstract
and irrelevant. I expect there is the germ of an idea in there, but until
the left can find away to present that idea without the baffling layer of
jargon and over-analysis, they're going to remain at a disadvantage to the
easy populism of the right.

Interesting article. We have heard so much about the size of our economy
but less about our quality of life. The UK quality of life is way below
the size of our economy i.e. economy size 6th largest in the world but quality
of life 15th. If we were the 10th largest economy but were 10th for quality
of life we would be better off than we are now in real terms.

We need a
radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather
than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration
of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured
our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments
only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being
driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven
into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British
comedy is on the decline.

Generation snowflake. "I'll do myself in if you take away my tablet and
mobile phone for half an hour".
They don't want to go out and meet people anymore. Nightclubs for instance,
are closing because the younger generation 'don't see the point' of going
out to meet people they would otherwise never meet, because they can meet
people on the internet. Leave them to it and the repercussions of it.....

Socialism is dying on its feet in the UK, hence the Tory's 17 point lead
at the mo. The lefties are clinging to whatever influence they have to sway
the masses instead of the ballot box. Good riddance to them.

George Moniot's articles are better thought out, researched and written
than the vast majority of the usual clickbait opinion pieces found on the
Guardian these days. One of the last journalists, rather than liberal arts
blogger vying for attention.

Neoliberalism's rap sheet is long and dangerous but this toxic philosophy
will continue unabated because most people can't join the dots and work
out how detrimental it has proven to be for most of us.

It dangles a carrot in order to create certain economic illusions but
the simple fact is neoliberal societies become more unequal the longer they
persist.

Neoliberal economies allow people to build huge global businesses very quickly
and will continue to give the winners more but they also can guve everyone
else more too but just at a slower rate. Socialism on the other hand mires
everyone in stagnant poverty. Question is do you want to be absolutely or
relatively better off.

You have no idea. Do not confuse capitalism with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
is a political ideology based on a mythical version of capitalism that doesn't
actually exist, but is a nice way to get the deluded to vote for something
that doesn't work in their interest at all.

And things will get worse as society falls apart due to globalisation, uberization,
lack of respect for authority, lacks of a fair tax and justice system, crime,
immorality, loss of trust of politicians and financial and corporate sectors,
uncontrolled immigration bringing with it insecurity and the risk of terrorism
and a dumbing down of society with increasing inequality. All this is in
a new book " The World at a Crossroads" which deals with the major issues
facing the planet.

There's nothing spurious or obscure about Neoliberalism. It is simply the
political ideology of the rich, which has been our uninterrupted governing
ideology since Reagan and Thatcher: Privatisation, deregulation, 'liberalisation'
of housing, labour, etc, trickledown / low-tax-on-the-rich economics, de-unionization.
You only don't see it if you don't want to see it.

I'm just thinking what is wonderful about societies that are big of social
unity. And conformity.
Those societies for example where you "belong" to your family. Where
teenage girls can be married off to elderly uncles to cement that belonging.
Or those societies where the belonging comes through religious centres.
Where the ostracism for "deviant" behaviour like being gay or for women
not submitting to their husbands can be brutal. And I'm not just talking
about muslims here.

Or those societies that are big on patriotism. Yep they are usually good
for mental health as the young men are given lessons in how to kill as many
other men as possible efficiently.

And then I have to think how our years of "neo-liberal" governments have
taken ideas of social liberalisation and enshrined them in law. It may be
coincidence but thirty years after Thatcher and Reagan we are far more tolerant
of homosexuality and willing to give it space to live, conversely we are
far less tolerant of racism and are willing to prosecute racist violence.
Feminists may still moan about equality but the position of women in society
has never been better, rape inside marriage has (finally) been outlawed,
sexual violence generally is no longer condoned except by a few, work opportunities
have been widened and the woman's role is no longer just home and family.
At least that is the case in "neo-liberal" societies, it isn't necessarily
the case in other societies.

So unless you think loneliness is some weird Stockholm Syndrome thing
where your sense of belonging comes from your acceptance of a stifling role
in a structured soiety, then I think blaming the heightened respect for
the individual that liberal societies have for loneliness is way off the
mark.

What strikes me about the cases you cite above, George, is not an over-respect
for the individual but another example of individuals being shoe-horned
into a structure. It strikes me it is not individualism but competition
that is causing the unhappiness. Competition to achieve an impossible ideal.

I fear George, that you are not approaching this with a properly open
mind dedicated to investigation. I think you have your conclusion and you
are going to bend the evidence to fit. That is wrong and I for one will
not support that. In recent weeks and months we have had the "woe, woe and
thrice woe" writings. Now we need to take a hard look at our findings. We
need to take out the biases resulting from greater awareness of mental health
and better and fuller diagnosis of mental health issues. We need to balance
the bias resulting from the fact we really only have hard data for modern
Western societies. And above all we need to scotch any bias resulting from
the political worldview of the researchers.

It sounded to me that he was telling us of farm labouring and factory fodder
stock that if we'd 'known our place' and kept to it ,all would be well because
in his ideal society there WILL be or end up having a hierarchy, its inevitable.

Wasn't all this started by someone who said, "There is no such thing as
Society"? The ultimate irony is that the ideology that championed the individual
and did so much to dismantle the industrial and social fabric of the Country
has resulted in a system which is almost totalitarian in its disregard for
its ideological consequences.

Thatcher said it in the sense that society is not abstract it is just other
people so when you say society needs to change then people need to change
as society is not some independent concept it is an aggregation of all us.
The left mis quote this all the time and either they don't get it or they
are doing on purpose.

No, Neoliberalism has been around since 1938.... Thatcher was only responsible
for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing
ahead around the world.

Furthermore, it could easily be argued that the Beatles helped create
loneliness - what do you think all those girls were screaming for? And also
it could be argued that the Beatles were bringing in neoliberalism in the
1960s, via America thanks to Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis etc.. Share

Great article, although surely you could've extended the blame to capitalism
has a whole?

In what, then, consists the alienation of labor? First, in the fact
that labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong
to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work,
that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but
rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental
energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker,
therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he
feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and
when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor, therefore, is
not voluntary, but forced--forced labor. It is not the gratification
of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien
nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the
plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists.

We have created a society with both flaws and highlights- and we have unwittingly
allowed the economic system to extend into our lives in negative ways.

On of the things being modern brings is movement- we move away from communities,
breaking friendships and losing support networks, and the support networks
are the ones that allow us to cope with issues, problems and anxiety.

Isolation among the youth is disturbing, it is also un natural, perhaps
it is social media, or fear of parents, or the fall in extra school activities
or parents simply not having a network of friends because they have had
to move for work or housing.

There is some upsides, I talk and get support from different international
communities through the social media that can also be so harmful- I chat
on xbox games, exchange information on green building forums, arts forums,
share on youtube as well as be part of online communities that hold events
in the real world.

Increasingly we seem to need to document our lives on social media to somehow
prove we 'exist'. We seem far more narcissistic these days, which tends
to create a particular type of unhappiness, or at least desire that can
never be fulfilled. Maybe that's the secret of modern consumer-based capitalism.
To be happy today, it probably helps to be shallow, or avoid things like
Twitter and Facebook!

Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological
impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although
the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern
society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly,
life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives.

Thanks George for commenting in such a public way on the unsayable: consume,
consume, consume seems to be the order of the day in our modern world and
the points you have highlighted should be part of public policy everywhere.

I'm old enough to remember when we had more time for each other; when
mothers could be full-time housewives; when evenings existed (evenings now
seem to be spent working or getting home from work). We are undoubtedly
more materialistic, which leads to more time spent working, although our
modern problems are probably not due to increasing materialism alone.

Regarding divorce and separation, I notice people in my wider circle
who are very open to affairs. They seem to lack the self-discipline to concentrate
on problems in their marriage and to give their full-time partner a high
level of devotion. Terrible problems come up in marriages but if you are
completely and unconditionally committed to your partner and your marriage
then you can get through the majority of them.

Aggressive self interest is turning in on itself. Unfortunately the powerful
who have realised their 'Will to Power' are corrupted by their own inflated
sense of self and thus blinded. Does this all predict a global violent revolution?

However, what is most interesting is how nearly all modern politicians
who peddle neoliberal doctrine or policy, refuse to use the name, or even
to openly state what ideology they are in fact following.

I suppose it is just a complete coincidence that the policy so many governments
are now following so closely follow known neoliberal doctrine. But of course
the clever and unpleasant strategy of those like yourself is to cry conspiracy
theory if this ideology, which dare not speak its name is mentioned.

Your style is tiresome. You make no specific supported criticisms again,
and again. You just make false assertions and engage in unpleasant ad homs
and attempted character assassination. You do not address the evidence for
what George Monbiot states at all.

An excellent article. One wonders exactly what one needs to say in order
to penetrate the reptilian skulls of those who run the system.

As an addition to Mr Monbiot's points, I would like to point out that
it is not only competitive self-interest and extreme individualism that
drives loneliness. Any system that has strict hierarchies and mechanisms
of social inclusion also drives it, because such systems inhibit strongly
spontaneous social interaction, in which people simply strike up conversation.
Thailand has such a system. Despite her promoting herself as the land of
smiles, I have found the people here to be deeply segregated and unfriendly.
I have lived here for 17 years. The last time I had a satisfactory face-to-face
conversation, one that went beyond saying hello to cashiers at checkout
counters or conducting official business, was in 1999. I have survived by
convincing myself that I have dialogues with my books; as I delve more deeply
into the texts, the authors say something different to me, to which I can
then respond in my mind.

Epidemics of mental illness are crushing the minds and bodies of
millions. It's time to ask where we are heading and why

I want to quote the sub headline, because "It's time to ask where we are
heading and why", is the important bit. George's excellent and scathing
evidence based criticism of the consequences of neoliberalism is on the
nail. However, we need to ask how we got to this stage. Despite it's name
neoliberalism doesn't really seem to contain any new ideas, and in some
way it's more about Thatcher's beloved return to Victorian values. Most
of what George Monbiot highlights encapsulatec Victorian thinking, the sort
of workhouse mentality.

Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology
that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed
world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go
much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution,
but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when
our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started
to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared
themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them
for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because
that explains what is going on.

To domesticate livestock, and to make them pliable and easy to work with
the farmer must make himself appear to these herd animals as if they are
their protector, the person who cares for them, nourishes and feeds them.
They become reliant on their apparent benefactor. Except of course this
is a deceitful relationship, because the farmer is just fattening them up
to be eaten.

For the powerful to exploit the rest of people in society for their own
benefit they had to learn how to conceal what they were really doing, and
to wrap it in justifications to bamboozle the people they were exploiting
for their own benefit. They did this by altering our language and inserting
ideas in our culture which justified their rule, and the positions of the
rest of us.

Before state religions, generally what was revered was the Earth, the
natural world. It was on a personal level, and not controlled by the powerful.
So the powerful needed to remove that personal meaningfulness from people's
lives, and said the only thing which was really meaningful, was the religion,
which of course they controlled and were usually the head of. Over generations
people were indoctrinated in a completely new way of thinking, and a language
manipulated so all people could see was the supposed divine right of kings
to rule. Through this language people were detached from what was personally
meaningful to them, and could only find meaningfulness by pleasing their
rulers, and being indoctrinated in their religion.

If you control the language people use, you can control how perceive
the world, and can express themselves.

By stripping language of meaningful terms which people can express themselves,
and filling it full of dubious concepts such as god, the right of kings
completely altered how people saw the world, how they thought. This is why
over the ages, and in different forms the powerful have always attempted
to have full control of our language through at first religion and their
proclamations, and then eventually by them controlling our education system
and the media.

The idea of language being used to control how people see the world,
and how they think is of course not my idea. George Orwell's Newspeak idea
explored in "1984" is very much about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

This control of language is well known throughout history. Often conquerors
would abolish languages of those they conquered. In the so called New World
the colonists eventually tried to control how indigenous people thought
by forcibly sending their children to boarding school, to be stripped of
their culture, their native language, and to be inculcated in the language
and ideas of their colonists. In Britain various attempts were made to banish
the Welsh language, the native language of the Britons, before the Anglo-Saxons
and the Normans took over.

However, what Orwell did not deal with properly is the origin of language
style. To Orwell, and to critics of neoliberalism, the problems can be traced
back to the rise of what they criticised. To a sort of mythical golden age.
Except all the roots of what is being criticised can be found in the period
before the invention of these doctrines. So you have to go right back to
the beginning, to understand how it all began.

Neoliberalism would never have been possible without this long control
of our language and ideas by the powerful. It prevents us thinking outside
the box, about what the problem really is, and how it all began.

All very well but you are talking about ruthlessness of western elites,
mostly British, not all.

It was not like that everywhere. Take Poland for example, and around
there..

New research is emerging - and I'd recommend reading of prof Frost from
St Andrew's Uni - that lower classes were actually treated with respect
by elites there, mainly land owners and aristocracy who more looked after
them and employed and cases of such ruthlessness as you describe were unknown
of.

I'd be interested to see how many different definitions I get in
response...

The reason I call neoliberalism the ideology which dare not speak it's name
is that in public you will rarely hear it mentioned by it's proponents.
However, it was a very important part of Thatcherism, Blairism, and so on.
What is most definite is that these politicians and others are most definitely
following some doctrine. Their ideas about what we must do and how we must
do it are arbitrary, but they make it sound as if it's the only way to do
things.

However, as I hint, the main problem in dealing with neoliberalism is
that none of the proponents of this doctrine admit to what ideology they
are actually following. Yet very clearly around the world leaders in many
countries are clearly singing from the same hymn sheet because the policy
they implement is so similar. Something has definitely changed. All the
attempts to roll back welfare, benefits, and public services is most definitely
new, or they wouldn't be having to reverse policy of the past if nothing
had change. But as all these politicians implementing this policy all seem
to refuse to explain what doctrine they are following, it makes it difficult
to pin down what is happening. Yet we can most definitely say that there
is a clear doctrine at work, because why else would so many political leaders
around the world be trying to implement such similar policy.

Neo-liberalism doesn't really exist except in the minds of the far
left and perhaps a few academics.

Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that
transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public
sector. ... Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire approach to economic
development.

I believe the term 'Neo liberalism' was coined by those well known 'Lefties'The
Chicago School .
If you don't believe that any of the above has been happening ,it does beg
the question as to where you have been for the past decade.

The ironies of modern civilization - we have never been more 'connected'
to other people on global level and less 'connected' on personal level.

We have never had access to such a wide range of information and opinions,
but also for a long time been so divided into conflicting groups, reading
and accessing in fact only that which reinforces what we already think.

These issues have been a long time coming, just think of the appeals of
the 60's to chill out and love everyone. Globalisation and neo-liberalism
has simply made society even more broken.
The way these problems have been ignored and made worse over the last few
decades make me think that the solution will only happen after a massive
catastrophe and society has to be rebuilt. Unless we make the same mistakes
again.
A shame really, you would think intelligence would be useful but it seems
not.

I would argue that it creates a bubble of existence for those who pursue
a path of "success" that instead turns to isolation . The amount of people
that I have met who have moved to London because to them it represents the
main location for everything . I get to see so many walking cliches of people
trying to fit in or stand out but also fitting in just the same .

The real disconnect that software is providing us with is truly staggering
. I have spoken to people from all over the World who seem to feel more
at home being alone and playing a game with strangers . The ones who are
most happy are those who seem to be living all aloe and the ones who try
and play while a girlfriend or family are present always seemed to be the
ones most agitated by them .

We are humans relying on simplistic algorithms that reduce us ,apps like
Tinder which turns us into a misogynist at the click of a button .

Facebook which highlights our connections with the other people and assumes
that everyone you know or have met is of the same relevance .

We also have Twitter which is the equivalent of screaming at a television
when you are drunk or angry .

We have Instagram where people revel in their own isolation and send
updates of it . All those products that are instantly updated and yet we
are ageing and always feeling like we are grouped together by simple algorithms
.

Television has been the main destroyer of social bonds since the 1950s and
yet it is only mentioned once and in relation to the number of competitions
on it, which completely misses the point. That's when I stopped taking this
article seriously.

I actually blame Marx for neoliberalism. He framed society purely in terms
economic, and persuaded that ideology is valuable in as much as it is actionable.

For a dialectician he was incredibly short sighted and superficial, not
realising he was creating a narrative inimical to personal expression and
simple thoughtfulness (although he was warned). To be fair, he can't have
appreciated how profoundly he would change the way we concieve societies.

Neoliberalism is simply the dark side of Marxism and subsumes the personal
just as comprehensively as communism.

We're picked apart by quantification and live as particulars, suffering
the ubiquitous consequences of connectivity alone . . .

Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by
Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest
echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment
are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our
economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an
economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job
security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get
in their way.

That fine illustration by Andrzej Krauze up there is exactly what I see
whenever I walk into an upscale mall or any Temple of Consumerism.

You can hear the Temple calling out: "Feel bad, atomized individuals?
Have a hole inside? Feel lonely? That's all right: buy some shit you don't
need and I guarantee you'll feel better."

And then it says: "So you bought it and you felt better for five minutes,
and now you feel bad again? Well, that's not rocket science...you should
buy MORE shit you don't need! I mean, it's not rocket science, you should
have figured this out on your own."

And then it says: "Still feel bad and you have run out of money? Well,
that's okay, just get it on credit, or take out a loan, or mortgage your
house. I mean, it's not rocket science. Really, you should have figured
this out on your own already...I thought you were a modern, go-get-'em,
independent, initiative-seizing citizen of the world?"

And then it says: "Took out too many loans, can't pay the bills and
the repossession has begun? Honestly, that's not my problem. You're just
a bad little consumer, and a bad little liberal, and everything is your
own fault. You go sit in a dark corner now where you don't bother the other
shoppers. Honestly, you're just being a burden on other consumers now. I'm
not saying you should kill yourself, but I can't say that we would mind
either."

And that's how the worms turn at the Temples of Consumerism and Neoliberalism.

I kept my sanity by not becoming a spineless obedient middle class pleaser
of a sociopathic greedy tribe pretending neoliberalism is the future.

The result is a great clarity about the game, and an intact empathy for
all beings.

The middle class treated each conscious "outsider" like a lowlife,
and now they play the helpless victims of circumstances.

I know why I renounced to my privileges.
They sleepwalk into their self created disorder.
And yes, I am very angry at those who wasted decades with their social stupidity,
those who crawled back after a start of change into their petit bourgeois
niche.

I knew that each therapist has to take a stand and that the most choose
petty careers.
Do not expect much sanity from them for your disorientated kids.
Get insightful yourself and share your leftover love to them.
Try honesty and having guts...that might help both of you.

Alternatively, neo-liberalism has enabled us to afford to live alone (entire
families were forced to live together for economic reasons), and technology
enables us to work remotely, with no need for interaction with other people.

This may make some people feel lonely, but for many others its utopia.

Some of the things that characterise Globalisation and Neoliberalism are
open borders and free movement. How can that contribute to isolation? That
is more likely to be fostered by Protectionism.
And there aren't fewer jobs. Employment is at record highs here and in many
other countries. There are different jobs, not fewer, and to be sure there
are some demographics that have lost out. But overall there are not fewer
jobs. That falls for the old "lump of labour" fallacy.

The corrosive state of mass television indoctrination sums it up: Apprentice,
Big Brother, Dragon's Den. By degrees, the standard keeps lowering. It is
no longer unusual for a licence funded TV programme to consist of a group
of the mentally deranged competing to be the biggest asshole in the room.

Our whole culture is more stressful. Jobs are more precarious; employment
rights more stacked in favor of the employer; workforces are deunionised;
leisure time is on the decrease; rents are unaffordable; a house is no longer
a realistic expectation for millions of young people. Overall, citizens
are more socially immobile and working harder for poorer real wages than
they were in the late 70's.

Unfortunately, sexual abuse has always been a feature of human societies.
However there is no evidence to suggest it was any worse in the past. Then
sexual abuse largely took place in institutional settings were at least
it could be potentially addressed. Now much of it has migrated to the great
neoliberal experiment of the internet, where child exploitation is at endemic
levels and completely beyond the control of law enforcement agencies. There
are now more women and children being sexually trafficked than there were
slaves at the height of the slave trade. Moreover, we should not forget
that Jimmy Saville was abusing prolifically right into the noughties.

My parents were both born in 1948. They say it was great. They bought
a South London house for next to nothing and never had to worry about getting
a job. When they did get a job it was one with rights, a promise of a generous
pension, a humane workplace environment, lunch breaks and an ethos of public
service. My mum says that the way women are talked about now is worse.

Sounds fine to me. That's not to say everything was great: racism was
acceptable (though surely the vile views pumped out onto social media are
as bad or worse than anything that existed then), homosexuality was illegal
and capital punishment enforced until the 1960's. However, the fact that
these things were reformed showed society was moving in the right direction.
Now we are going backwards, back to 1930's levels or inequality and a reactionary,
small-minded political culture fueled by loneliness, rage and misery.

And there is little evidence to suggest that anyone has expanded their mind
with the internet. A lot of people use it to look at porn, post racist tirades
on Facebook, send rape threats, distributes sexual images of partners with
their permission, take endless photographs of themselves and whip up support
for demagogues. In my view it would much better if people went to a library
than lurked in corporate echo chambers pumping out the like of 'why dont
theese imagrantz go back home and all those lezbo fems can fuckk off too
ha ha megalolz ;). Seriously mind expanding stuff. Share

As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people
I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace
was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their
colleagues socially . This was encouraged and the organisation achieved
an excellent record in retaining staff at a time when recruitment was difficult.
Performance levels were also extremely high . I particulalry remember with
gratitude the solidarity of staff when one of our colleagues - a haemophiliac
- contracted aids through an infected blood transfusion and died bravely
but painfully - the staff all supported him in every way possible through
his ordeal and it was a privilege for me to work with such kind and caring
people .

To add to this discussion, we might consider the strongest need and conflict
each of us experiences as a teenager, the need to be part of a tribe vs
the the conflict inherent in recognising one's uniqueness. In a child's
life from about 7 or 8 until adolescence, friends matter the most. Then
the young person realises his or her difference from everyone else and has
to grasp what this means.

Those of us who enjoyed a reasonably healthy upbringing will get through
the peer group / individuation stage with happiness possible either way
- alone or in friendship. Our parents and teachers will have fostered a
pride in our own talents and our choice of where to socialise will be flexible
and non-destructive.

Those of us who at some stage missed that kind of warmth and acceptance
in childhood can easily stagnate. Possibly this is the most awkward of personal
developmental leaps. The person neither knows nor feels comfortable with
themselves, all that faces them is an abyss.
Where creative purpose and strength of spirit are lacking, other humans
can instinctively sense it and some recoil from it, hardly knowing what
it's about. Vulnerabilities attendant on this state include relationships
holding out some kind of ersatz rescue, including those offered by superficial
therapists, religions, and drugs, legal and illegal.

Experience taught that apart from the work we might do with someone deeply
compassionate helping us where our parents failed, the natural world
is a reliable healer. A kind of self-acceptance and individuation is
possible away from human bustle. One effect of the seasons and of being
outdoors amongst other life forms is to challenge us physically, into present
time, where our senses start to work acutely and our observational skills
get honed, becoming more vibrant than they could at any educational establishment.

This is one reason we have to look after the Earth, whether it's in a
city context or a rural one. Our mental, emotional and physical health is
known to be directly affected by it.

A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing
very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose
lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger
TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people
happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't
going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just
extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick

It's importance for social cohesion -- yes inspite of the problems , can
not be overestimated .Don't let the rich drive it out , people who don't
understand ,or care what it's for .The poorer boroughs cannot afford it
.K&C have easily 1/2billion in Capital Reserves ,so yes they must continue
. Here I can assure you ,one often sees the old and lonely get a hug .If
drug gangs are hitting each other or their rich boy customers with violence
- that is a different matter . And yes of course if we don't do something
to help boys from ethnic minorities ,with education and housing -of course
it only becomes more expensive in the long run.

Boris Johnson has idiotically mouthed off about trying to mobilise people
to stand outside the Russian Embassy , as if one can mobilise youth by telling
them to tidy their bedroom .Because that's all it amounts to - because you
have to FEEL protest and dissent . Well here at Carnival - there it is ,protest
and dissent . Now listen to it . And of course it will be far easier than
getting any response from sticking your tongue out at the Putin monster --
He has his bombs , just as Kensington and Chelsea have their money.
(and anyway it's only another Boris diversion ,like building some fucking
stupid bridge ,instead of doing anything useful)

"Society" or at least organized society is the enemy of corporate power.
The idea of Neoliberal capitalism is to replace civil society with corporate
law and rule. The same was true of the less extreme forms of capitalism.
Society is the enemy of capital because it put restrictions on it and threatens
its power.

When society organizes itself and makes laws to protect society from
the harmful effects of capitalism, for example demands on testing drugs
to be sure they are safe, this is a big expense to Pfizer, there are many
examples - just now in the news banning sugary drinks. If so much as a small
group of parents forming a day care co-op decide to ban coca cola from their
group that is a loss of profit.

That is really what is going on, loneliness is a big part of human life,
everyone feels it sometimes, under Neoliberal capitalism it is simply more
exaggerated due to the out and out assault on society itself.

Well the prevailing Global Capitalist world view is still a combination
1. homocentric Cartesian Dualism i.e. seeing humans as most important and
sod all other living beings, and seeing humans as separate from all other
living beings and other humans and 2. Darwinian "survival of the fittest"
seeing everything as a competition and people as "winners and losers, weak
or strong with winners and the strong being most important". From these
2 combined views all kinds of "games" arise. The main one being the game
of "victim, rescuer, persecutor" (Transactional Analysis). The Guardian
engages in this most of the time and although I welcome the truth in this
article to some degree, surprisingly, as George is environmentally friendly,
it kinda still is talking as if humans are most important and as if those
in control (the winners) need to change their world view to save the victims.
I think the world view needs to zoom out to a perspective that recognises
that everything is interdependent and that the apparent winners and the
strong are as much victims of their limited world view as those who are
manifesting the effects of it more obviously.

Here in America, we have reached the point at which police routinely dispatch
the mentally ill, while complaining that "we don't have the time for this"
(N. Carolina). When a policeman refuses to kill a troubled citizen, he or
she can and will be fired from his job (West Virginia). This has become
not merely commonplace, but actually a part of the social function of the
work of the police -- to remove from society the burden of caring for the
mentally ill by killing them. In the state where I live, a state trooper
shot dead a mentally ill man who was not only unarmed, but sitting on the
toilet in his own home. The resulting "investigation" exculpated the trooper,
of course; in fact, young people are constantly told to look up to the police.

Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator
sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed.
This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying
narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick
worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of
power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the
immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the
same ie human suffering.

The impact of increasing alienation on individual mental health has been
known about and discussed for a long time.

When looking at a way forward, the following article is interesting:

"Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social
machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class
has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising
identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use,
obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless
credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school
doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty
of the people would require. And so on.

The ordinary citizen thus lives
in an incredibly deceiving reality. Perhaps this explains the tremendous
and persistent gap between the burgeoning of motives to struggle, and the
paucity of actual combatants. The contrary would be a miracle. Thus the
considerable importance of what I call the struggle for representation:
at every moment, in every area, to expose the deception and bring to light,
in the simplicity of form which only real theoretical penetration makes
possible, the processes in which the false-appearances, real and imagined,
originate, and this way, to form the vigilant consciousness, placing our
image of reality back on its feet and reopening paths to action."

For the global epidemic of abusive, effacing homogenisation of human intellectual
exchange and violent hyper-sexualisation of all culture, I blame the US
Freudian PR guru Edward Bernays and his puritan forebears - alot.

Thanks for proving that Anomie is a far more sensible theory than Dialectical
Materialistic claptrap that was used back in the 80s to terrorize the millions
of serfs living under the Jack boot of Leninist Iron curtain.

There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart.
It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely
outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in
retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised
individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976)
may have been influential in creating that climate.

Anyway, the wheel has turned thank goodness. We are becoming wiser and
understanding that "ecology" doesn't just refer to our relationship with
the natural world but also, closer to home, our relationship with each other.

What is loneliness? I love my own company and I love walking in nature and
listening to relaxation music off you tube and reading books from the library.
That is all free. When I fancied a change of scene, I volunteered at my
local art gallery.

Mental health issues are not all down to loneliness. Indeed, other people
can be a massive stress factor, whether it is a narcissistic parent, a bullying
spouse or sibling, or an unreasonable boss at work.

I'm on the internet far too much and often feel the need to detox from
it and get back to a more natural life, away from technology. The 24/7 news
culture and selfie obsessed society is a lot to blame for social disconnect.

The current economic climate is also to blame, if housing and job security
are a problem for individuals as money worries are a huge factor of stress.
The idea of not having any goal for the future can trigger depressive thoughts.

I have to say, I've been happier since I don't have such unrealistic
expectations of what 'success is'. I rarely get that foreign holiday or
new wardrobe of clothes and my mobile phone is archaic. The pressure that
society puts on us to have all these things- and get in debt for them is
not good. The obsession with economic growth at all costs is also stupid,
as the numbers don't necessarily mean better wealth, health or happiness.

Very fine article, as usual from George, until right at the end he says:

This does not require a policy response.

But it does. It requires abandonment of neoliberalism as the means used
to run the world. People talk about the dangers of man made computers usurping
their makers but mankind has, it seems, already allowed itself to become
enslaved. This has not been achieved by physical dependence upon machines
but by intellectual enslavement to an ideology.

A very good "Opinion" by George Monbiot one of the best I have seen on this
Guardian blog page.

I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are
fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting
of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions
of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society
who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. Many other areas
of human life are also under attack from the Neoliberal, even the very air
we breathe, and the earth we stand upon.

The Amish have understood for 300 years that technology could have a negative
effect on society and decided to limit its effects. I greatly admire their
approach. Neal Stephenson's recent novel Seveneves coined the term Amistics
for the practice of assessing and limiting the impact of tech. We need a
Minister for Amistics in the government. Wired magazine did two features
on the Amish use of telephones which are quite insightful.

If we go back to 1848, we also find Marx and Engels, in the Communist
Manifesto, complaining about the way that the first free-market capitalism
(the original liberalism) was destroying communities and families by forcing
workers to move to where the factories were being built, and by forcing
women and children into (very) low paid work. 150 years later, after many
generations of this, combined with the destruction of work in the North,
the result is widespread mental illness. But a few people are really rich
now, so that's all right, eh?

Social media is ersatz community. It's like eating grass: filling, but
not nourishing.

Young people are greatly harmed by not being able to see a clear path forward
in the world. For most people, our basic needs are a secure job, somewhere
secure and affordable to live, and a decent social environment in terms
of public services and facilities. Unfortunately, all these things are sliding
further out of reach for young people in the UK, and they know this. Many
already live with insecure housing where their family could have to move
at a month or two's notice.

Our whole economic system needs to be built around providing these basic
securities for people. Neoliberalism = insecure jobs, insecure housing and
poor public services, because these are the end result of its extreme free
market ideology.

I agree with this 100%. Social isolation makes us unhappy. We have a false
sense of what makes us unhappy - that success or wealth will enlighten or
liberate us. What makes us happy is social connection. Good friendships,
good relationships, being part of community that you contribute to. Go to
some of the poorest countries in the world and you may meet happy people
there, tell them about life in rich countries, and say that some people
there are unhappy. They won't believe you. We do need to change our worldview,
because misery is a real problem in many countries.

It is tempting to see the world before Thatcherism, which is what most English
writers mean when they talk about neo-liberalism, as an idyll, but it simply
wasn't.

The great difficulty with capitalism is that while it is in many ways
an amoral doctrine, it goes hand in hand with personal freedom. Socialism
is moral in its concern for the poorest, but then it places limits on personal
freedom and choice. That's the price people pay for the emphasis on community,
rather than the individual.

Close communities can be a bar on personal freedom and have little tolerance
for people who deviate from the norm. In doing that, they can entrench loneliness.

This happened, and to some extent is still happening, in the working
class communities which we typically describe as 'being destroyed by Thatcher'.
It's happening in close-knit Muslim communities now.

I'm not attempting to vindicate Thatcherism, I'm just saying there's
a pay-off with any model of society. George Monbiot's concerns are actually
part of a long tradition - Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village (1770) chimes
with his thinking, as does DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism
is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that
kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. For most, it is necessary
to submit yourself to a form of being yoked, in terms of the daily grind
which places limits on what you can then do, as the latter depends hugely
on money. The idea that most people are "free" to buy the house they want,
private education, etc., not to mention whether they can afford the many
other things they are told will make them happy, is a very bad joke. Hunter-gatherers
have more real freedom than we do. Share

According to Wiki: 'Neoliberalism refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence
of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.
These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization,
fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government
spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.'

We grow into fear - the stress of exams and their certain meanings; the
lower wages, longer hours, and fewer rights at work; the certainty of debt
with ever greater mortgages; the terror of benefit cuts combined with rent
increases.

If we're forever afraid, we'll cling to whatever life raft presents.

It's a demeaning way to live, but it serves the Market better than having
a free, reasonably paid, secure workforce, broadly educated and properly
housed, with rights.

Insightful analysis... George quite rightly pinpoints the isolating effects of modern society
and technology and the impact on the quality of our relationships. The obvious question is how can we offset these trends and does the government
care enough to do anything about them?

It strikes me that one of the major problems is that [young] people have
been left to their own devices in terms of their consumption of messages
from Social and Mass online Media - analogous to leaving your kids in front
of a video in lieu of a parental care or a babysitter. In traditional society
- the messages provided by Society were filtered by family contact and real
peer interaction - and a clear picture of the limited value of the media
was propogated by teachers and clerics. Now young and older people alike
are left to make their own judgments and we cannot be surprised when they
extract negative messages around body image, wealth and social expectations
and social and sexual norms from these channels. It's inevitable that this
will create a boundary free landscape where insecurity, self-loathing and
ultimately mental illness will prosper.

I'm not a traditionalist in any way but there has to be a role for teachers
and parents in mediating these messages and presenting the context for analysing
what is being said in a healthy way. I think this kind of Personal Esteem
and Life Skills education should be part of the core curriculum in all schools.
Our continued focus on basic academic skills just does not prepare young
people for the real world of judgementalism, superficiality and cliques
and if anything dealing with these issues are core life skills.

We can't reverse the fact that media and modern society is changing but
we can prepare people for the impact which it can have on their lives.

A politician's answer.
X is a problem. Someone else, in your comment it will be teachers that have
to sort it out. Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour
a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes
from the things you do. Taking kids away from their academic/cultural studies
reduces this. This is a problem in society. What can society as a
whole do to solve it and what are YOU prepared to contribute.

Rather difficult to do when their parents are Thatchers children and buy
into the whole celebrity, you are what you own lifestyle too....and teachers
are far too busy filling out all the paperwork that shows they've met their
targets to find time to teach a person centred course on self-esteem to
a class of 30 teenagers.

I think we should just continue to be selfish and self-serving, sneering
and despising anyone less fortunate than ourselves, look up to and try to
emulate the shallow, vacuous lifestyle of the non-entity celebrity, consume
the Earth's natural resources whilst poisoning the planet and the people,
destroy any non-contributing indigenous peoples and finally set off all
our nuclear arsenals in a smug-faced global firework display to demonstrate
our high level of intelligence and humanity. Surely, that's what we all
want? Who cares? So let's just carry on with business as usual!

Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization.
The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate
world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology
is one of the tools.
No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed
a quasi existence.

Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism
has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive
of everyone else.

What's the solution? Well if neoliberalism is the root cause, we need
a systematic change, which is a problem considering there is no alternative
right now. We can however, get active in rebuilding communities and I am
encouraged by George Monbiot's work here.

My approach is to get out and join organizations working toward system
change. 350.org is a good example. Get involved.

we live in a narcissistic and ego driven world that dehumanises everyone.
we have an individual and collective crisis of the soul. it is our false
perception of ourselves that creates a disconnection from who we really
are that causes loneliness.

I agree. This article explains why it is a perfectly normal reaction to
the world we are currently living in. It goes as far as to suggest that
if you do not feel depressed at the state of our world there's something
wrong with you ;-) http://upliftconnect.com/mutiny-of-the-soul/

Surely there is a more straightforward possible explanation for increasing
incidence of "unhapiness"?

Quite simply, a century of gradually increasing general living standards
in the West have lifted the masses up Maslows higiene hierarchy of needs,
to where the masses now have largely only the unfulfilled self esteem needs
that used to be the preserve of a small, middle class minority (rather than
the unfulfilled survival, security and social needs of previous generations)

If so - this is good. This is progress. We just need to get them up another
rung to self fulfillment (the current concern of the flourishing upper middle
classes).

Error.... Who mentioned material goods? I think you have not so much "missed
the point" as "made your own one up" .

And while agreed that you could, in theory, be poor and meet all of your
needs (in fact the very point of the analysis is that money, of itself,
isn't what people "need") the reality of the structure of a western capitalist
society means that a certain level of affluence is almost certainly a prerequisite
for meeting most of those needs simply because food and shelter at the bottom
end and, say, education and training at the top end of self fulfillment
all have to be purchased. Share

Also note that just because a majority of people are now so far up the
hierarchy
does in no way negate an argument that corporations haven't also noticed
this and target advertising appropriately to exploit it (and maybe we need
to talk about that)

It just means that it's lazy thinking to presume we are in some way "sliding
backwards" socially, rather than needing to just keep pushing through this
adversity through to the summit.

I have to admit it does really stick in my craw a bit hearing millenials
moan about how they may never get to *own* a really *nice* house while their
grandparents are still alive who didn't even get the right to finish school
and had to share a bed with their siblings.

There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest'
is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society
where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia
or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies,
state involvement, militias.

What you are arguing for is a system (for that is what it is) that demands
everyone compete with one another. It is not free, or liberal, or democratic,
or libertarian. It is designed to oppress, control, exploit and degrade
human beings. This kind of corporatism in which everyone is supposed to
serve the God of the market is, ironically, quite Stalinist. Furthermore,
a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just
plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something
to aspire to?

George, you are right, of course. The burning question, however, is not
'Is our current social set-up making us ill' (it certainly is), but 'Is
there a healthier alternative?' What form of society would make us less
ill? Socialism and egalatarianism, wherever they are tried, tend to lead
to their own set of mental-illness-inducing problems, chiefly to do with
thwarted opportunity, inability to thrive, and constraints on individual
freedom. The sharing, caring society is no more the answer than the brutally
individualistic one. You may argue that what is needed is a balance between
the two, but that is broadly what we have already. It ain't perfect, but
it's a lot better than any of the alternatives.

We certainly do NOT at present have a balance between the two societies...Have
you not read the article? Corporations and big business have far too much
power and control over our lives and our Gov't. The gov't does not legislate
for a real living minimum wage and expects the taxpayer to fund corporations
low wage businesses. The Minimum wage and benefit payments are sucked in
to ever increasing basic living costs leaving nothing for the human soul
aside from more work to keep body and soul together, and all the while the
underlying message being pumped at us is that we are failures if we do not
have wealth and all the accoutrements that go with it....How does that create
a healthy society?

Neoliberalism. A simple word but it does a great deal of work for people
like Monbiot.

The simple statistical data on quality of life differences between generations
is absolutely nowhere to be found in this article, nor are self-reported
findings on whether people today are happier, just as happy or less happy
than people thirty years ago. In reality quality of life and happiness indices
have generally been increasing ever since they were introduced.
It's more difficult to know if things like suicide, depression and mental
illness are actually increasing or whether it's more to do with the fact
that the number of people who are prepared to report them is increasing:
at least some of the rise in their numbers will be down to greater awareness
of said mental illness, government campaigns and a decline in associated
social stigma.

Either way, what evidence there is here isn't even sufficient to establish
that we are going through some vast mental health crisis in the first place,
never mind that said crisis is inextricably bound up with 'neoliberalism'.

Furthermore, I'm inherently suspicious of articles that manage to connect
every modern ill to the author's own political bugbear, especially if they
cherry-pick statistical findings to support their point. I'd be just as,
if not more, suspicious if it was a conservative author trying to link the
same ills to the decline in Christianity or similar. In fact, this article
reminds me very much of the sweeping claims made by right-wingers about
the allegedly destructive effects of secularism/atheism/homosexuality/video
games/South Park/The Great British Bake Off/etc...

If you're an author and you have a pet theory, and upon researching an
article you believe you see a pattern in the evidence that points towards
further confirmation of that theory, then you should step back and think
about whether said pattern is just a bit too psychologically convenient
and ideologically simple to be true. This is why people like Steven Pinker
- properly rigorous, scientifically versed writer-researchers - do the work
they do in systematically sifting through the sociological and historical
data: because your mind is often actively trying to convince you to believe
that neoliberalism causes suicide and depression, or, if you're a similarly
intellectually lazy right-winger, homosexuality leads to gang violence and
the flooding of(bafflingly, overwhelmingly heterosexual) parts of America.

I see no sign that Monbiot is interested in testing his belief in his
central claim and as a result this article is essentially worthless except
as an example of a certain kind of political rhetoric.

social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide,
anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat .... Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people.

Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking
15 cigarettes a day:

it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%

Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long
list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there
must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants
must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments
available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine
the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There
is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling
on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products
and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical
for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting
the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and
therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth
protecting.

Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front
of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there
is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have
a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a
company'.

Notable quotes:

"... This is a very dishonest take on Trump. It abstracts from the actual political situation. Trump may be a symptom of America writ large!this is inevitable. But Trump is an antidote to the failed policies of global capitalism. ..."

"... Trump is an attempt by fly-over country and middle America to drag all of us back toward community and rootedness. This criticism of Trump on the basis of his alleged individual vices is characteristic of the cosmopolitan conservative. ..."

"... You hilarious. "but most Americans headed west to GET AWAY from those types." Perhaps a little thing called manifest destiny played a role"– Incentives to move west, cheap land, land speculation, gold ! etc. ..."

"... Trump is a strange man. He pupports to represent "fly-over" country and it's yearning for American traditions of the past rooted in a long-forgotten nationalism yet he lives none of these things and in most cases he demonstrates the opposite in his professional and personal life. ..."

"... Americans admired Trump not because he was wealthy, but because he became wealthy honestly, ..."

The pitchman and huckster and serial entrepreneur are classic American types, but most
Americans headed west to GET AWAY from those types. Those types stayed in NYC, where they
manipulated and ruined the rest of the country to enrich themselves. Panics and depressions
every few years, civil wars and foreign wars, all crushed America and enriched NYC.

Trump is just the latest NYC booster to fool the rest of America for his own
aggrandizement. (I confess, he fooled me for a while!)

Hmm let's see, why else would HRC declare, 'we are great because we are good', or a host
of Republicans insist on calling the U.S. indispensable and exceptional. Why else would our
MSM make it a litmus test to require DT to call Putin a thug and a murderer and recoil in
horror when he retorts, 'we aren't so innocent'.

Oddly enough, not only is Trump a mirror but his bad behavior is reinforced and his few
moments of restraint are mercilessly condemned.

This is a very dishonest take on Trump. It abstracts from the actual political situation.
Trump may be a symptom of America writ large!this is inevitable. But Trump is an antidote to
the failed policies of global capitalism.

Trump is an attempt by fly-over country and middle America to drag all of us back
toward community and rootedness. This criticism of Trump on the basis of his alleged
individual vices is characteristic of the cosmopolitan conservative.

To wit: Trump is an advocate of national unity and rootedness which the author professes
to admire. "Nationalism not globalism shall be our credo". Meanwhile the author harps on
individual virtue and vice!a symptom no doubt of our extreme atomization.

Tocqueville's impressions are echoed by Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit" when Martin visits
America and Dickens relates his experiences with the Americans Martin met. Dickens was a keen
observer of people.

One way to look at it is that we are all victims of our own success; as Keb Mo said, Victims
of Comfort. We lack the character formation of family / community / self reliance because,
ironically, our government doesn't actually want Liberty, they want conformity. Thus our
leaders tear down every institution in its way. With the righteous aim of looking out for our
liberty they tear down repressive institutions that offer a conformity that is too diverse
for them to control. Thus we are left with fewer places to turn for necessary character
development. We look to them, which is working to their best design, to fulfill our demands
for a better world. No matter which side of the debate fuels our intractable demands, we are
all left with an unexamined conscience, demanding change in the world while not having our
own tools of character to achieve it. This idiot included.

If Trump is an advocate of national unity and rootedness, I'd hate to see what he'd be like
when he's trying to DIS-unite us. Trump is simply another US huckster with a YU-UUGE chip on
his shoulder. And his gullibles are those who want to be like him.

Pollster:
You hilarious. "but most Americans headed west to GET AWAY from those types." Perhaps a
little thing called manifest destiny played a role"– Incentives to move west, cheap
land, land speculation, gold ! etc.

Trump is a strange man. He pupports to represent "fly-over" country and it's yearning for
American traditions of the past rooted in a long-forgotten nationalism yet he lives none of
these things and in most cases he demonstrates the opposite in his professional and personal
life.
I guess that would make him a good ol' American huckster.

If circumstances don't evolve somehow on their own, rendering the swamp inconsequential, that
people already understand, our society may just collapse. We are to diverse to come together
and push the cart in the same direction. Our two political parties have already collapsed,
evidence of the election. Trump with no GOP support , and still none is President. Hillary is
in exile with worse popularity than Trump and Bernie Sanders is very popular. How is this
setting some course or refining a model.

Americans admired Trump not because he was wealthy, but because he became wealthy honestly,
by creating thousands of jobs. Americans didn't reject Romney because he was wealthy or tried
to hide it, but because he became wealthy by destroying American jobs.

Sorry, Mr. Burtka, when I look in the mirror, I don't see a man with no friends, who lies
constantly in order to elevate himself, who only has money because he inherited millions, and
who makes impossible promises to people looking to blame others for their own failures.

For the few Trump characteristics you've touched on, there are dozens you've ignored.
Trump has two eyes, one nose and two ears; that doesn't make him like me.

Steve:
Americans admired Trump not because he was wealthy, but because he became wealthy
honestly,

Um, no. Trump became wealthy the
real
old fashioned way – he inherited it.
As was frequently pointed out during the election season, even taking his claims of his net
worth at face value (despite much circumstantial evidence that those claims are grossly
inflated), he would have been worth far more if he had simply taken his inheritance and
plugged it into a plain vanilla Vanguard index fund. He has spent his lifetime
losing
money, and stiffing hundreds of small business vendors and contractors along
the way.

According to some commenters at MoA the US neocons can be viewed as a flavor of political
psychopaths: "Linear thinking is precisely how Washington psychopaths think and execute once they have
identified a targeted population for subservience and eventual exploitation. It's a laser-like
focus on control using the tools psychopaths understand: money, guns and butter. U.S. leaders
use linear thinking because, as psychopaths, they do not have the ability to think otherwise.
Linear thinking give leaders control over how their subordinates think and execute. A culture
of psychopathy means subordinates and supporters will offer slavish devotion to such a linear
path. Anyone straying from the path is not insightful or innovative, they are rebels that sow
confusion and weaken leaders. They must be silenced and banished from the Washington tribe."

and "
the Neocons seem to suffer from something almost worse - a misguided belief in their own propaganda.
Even the psychopath manages to fake plausibility - although he has no empathy for the victim and
takes a thrill out of hurting them, he can still know enough about them to predict how they will
react and to fake empathy himself. This ability seems to be missing in the folk who send the troops
in. Here there seems to be the genuine but unquestioning belief in one's own infallibility - that
there is one right way of doing things to which all others must and will yield if enough pressure
is applied. The line by one of GWB's staff was, supposedly, that "we create our own reality".
It is this creation of a reality utterly divorced from the real world that seems to lead to disaster
every single time. "

Notable quotes:

"... Provided the gross flaws of the intelligence, one has to wonder about the quality of the education in politics provided by Harvard and other expensive universities.. What they seem to learn very well there is lying. ..."

"... Barack CIA 0bama. ..."

"... It seems the, "Mission Possible" of the alphabet agencies is not intelligence, but chaos. ..."

"... Did the U.S. enter the First World War to save the world and democracy, or was it a game of waiting until the sides were exhausted enough that victory would be a walkover, the prize a seat at the center of power and the result that the U.S. could now take advantage of a superior position over the now exhausted former superpowers, having sat out the worst of the fighting and sold to both sides at a healthy profit? ..."

"... Invading Afghanistan and Iraq gives the U.S. a dominant role in the center of the Asian continent, the position coveted by Britain, Russia, France and the Ottoman Empire during the Great Power rivalry leading up to the Great War. It can be seen as partial success in a policy of encirclement of Russia and China. Redefining the Afghanistan and Iraq wars along these lines make them look more successful, not less, however odious we may thing these objectives might be from moral and international law perspectives. ..."

"... you mean non-conforming realities like the rule of law, and possible future contingencies like war crimes tribunals? ..."

"... it seems to me that trying to write some kind of rational analysis of a US foreign policy without mentioning the glaring fact that it's all absolutely illegal strikes me as an exercise in confusion. ..."

"... the author's focus on successful implementation of policy is misguided. That the Iraq War was based on a lie, the Libyan bombing Campaign was illegal, and the Syrian conflict was an illegal proxy war does not trouble him. And the strategic reasons for US long-term occupation of Afghanistan escapes him. ..."

"... Although he laments the failure to plan for contingencies, the words "accountable" and "accountability" never appear in this essay. Nor does the word "neocon" - despite their being the malignant driving force in US FP. ..."

"... There have been many lessons for the Russians since Afghanistan, two that Russia was directly involved with were the 90's break-up of Yugoslavia in the 90's (and the diplomatic invention of R2P) and the Chechen turmoil of the last decade. ..."

"... My only gripe with his work is that he always describes multiple aspects of psychopathy in his observations of U.S. foreign policy and the Washington ruling elite, but never goes as far as to conclude the root of all our problems are psychopathic individuals and institutions, or a culture of psychopathy infesting larger groups of the same, e.g., Washington elite, "The Borg", etc. ..."

"... Linear thinking is precisely how Washington psychopaths think and execute once they have identified a targeted population for subservience and eventual exploitation. It's a laser-like focus on control using the tools psychopaths understand: money, guns and butter. U.S. leaders use linear thinking because, as psychopaths, they do not have the ability to think otherwise. Linear thinking give leaders control over how their subordinates think and execute. A culture of psychopathy means subordinates and supporters will offer slavish devotion to such a linear path. Anyone straying from the path is not insightful or innovative, they are rebels that sow confusion and weaken leaders. They must be silenced and banished from the Washington tribe. ..."

"... the military was told "Go to Iraq, overthrow Saddam, everything will work out once we get our contractors and corporations in after you." Paul Bremer's CPA and his "100 Orders" were supposed to fix everything. But the Iraqis objected strenuously to the oil privatization selloff (and the rest of it) and the insurgency was launched. Okay, the military was told, break the insurgency. In comes the CIA, Special Forces, mass surveillance - what comes out? Abu Ghraib torture photos. The insurgency gets even stronger. Iran ends up winning the strategic game, hands down, and has far more influence in Iraq than it could ever dream of during the Saddam era. The whole objective, turning Iraq into a client state of the U.S. neoliberal order, utterly failed. ..."

"... Here's the point I think you're missing: the Washington strategists behind all this are batshit crazy and divorced from reality. Their objectives have to be rewritten every few years, because they're hopeless pipe dreams. They live and work and breathe in these Washington military-industrial think tanks, neocons and neoliberals both, that are largely financed by arms manufacturers and associated private equity firms. As far as the defense contractors go, one war is as good as another, they can keep selling arms to all regardless. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria - cash cows is all they are. So, they finance the PR monkeys to keep pushing "strategic geopolitical initiatives" that are really nonsensical and have no hope of working in the long run - but who cares, the cash keeps flowing. ..."

"... It's all nonsense, there's no FSA just Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates, plus the Kurdish proxy force is a long-term dead end - but it keeps the war going. A more rational approach - work with Russia to defeat ISIS, don't worry about economic cooperation between Syria and Iran, tell the Saudis and Israelis that Iran won't invade them (it won't), pull back militarily and focus instead on domestic problems in the USA - the think tanks, defense contractors, Saudi and Israeli lobbyists, they don't like that. ..."

"... Brenner is trying to mislead us with bombastic terminology like "The Linear Mindset". The root cause of America's problems is what Michael Scheuer calls Imperial Hubris: The idea that they are Masters of the Universe and so they have omnipotent power to turn every country into a vassal. But when this hubris meets reality, they get confused and don't know what to do. In such a case, they resort to three standard actions: sanctions, regime change or chaos. If these three don't work, they repeat them! ..."

"... Politicians are mere puppets. Their real owners are the 1% who use the Deep State to direct policy. Among this 1% there are zionists who have enormous influence on US Middle Eastern policy and they use the neocons as their attack dogs to direct such policy. This hubris has caused so much pain, destruction and death all over the world and it has also caused America so much economic damage. ..."

"... America is waning as a global power but instead of self-introspection and returning to realism, they are doubling down on neocon policy stupidity. Putin, China and Iran are trying to save them from their stupidity but they seem to be hell-bent on committing suicide. But I hope the policy sophistication of Russia, China and Iran, as well as their military capabilities that raise the stakes high for US military intervention will force the Masters of the Universe to see sense and reverse their road to destruction. ..."

"... the Neocons seem to suffer from something almost worse - a misguided belief in their own propaganda. Even the psychopath manages to fake plausibility - although he has no empathy for the victim and takes a thrill out of hurting them, he can still know enough about them to predict how they will react and to fake empathy himself. This ability seems to be missing in the folk who send the troops in. Here there seems to be the genuine but unquestioning belief in one's own infallibility - that there is one right way of doing things to which all others must and will yield if enough pressure is applied. The line by one of GWB's staff was, supposedly, that "we create our own reality". It is this creation of a reality utterly divorced from the real world that seems to lead to disaster every single time. ..."

"... The propaganda part is inventing, manufacturing and embellishing some embodiment of evil that must be defeated to liberate their victims and save humanity. That's the cover story, not the underlying purpose of U.S. aggression. ..."

"... Neocons do not believe that exclusively as a goal in itself - it merely dovetails rather nicely with their ultimate obsession with control, and it's and easy sell against any less-than-perfect targeted foreign leader or government. Irrational demonization is the embodiment of that propaganda. ..."

"... The methods of ultimately controlling the liberated people and their nation's resources are cloaked in the guise of 'bringing Western democracy'. Methods for corrupting the resulting government and usurping their laws and voting are hidden or ignored. The propaganda then turns to either praising the resulting utopia or identifying/creating a new evil that now must also be eliminated. The utopia thing hasn't worked out so well in Libya, Iraq or Ukraine, so they stuck with the 'defeat evil' story. ..."

"... Apart from psychopathy in US leadership, the US has no understanding, nor respect of, other cultures. This is not just in US leadership, but in the exceptional people in general. It shows up from time to time in comments at blogs like this, and is often quite noticeable in comments at SST. ..."

"... The essence of imperial hubris is the belief that one's country is omnipotent; that the country can shape and create reality. The country's main aspiration is to create clients, dependencies and as the Godfather Zbigniew Bzrezinski candidly put it, "vassals".Such a mindset does not just appreciate the reality of contingency; it also does not appreciate the nature of complex systems. The country's elites believe that both soft and hard power should be able to ensure the desired outcomes. But resistance to imperial designs and blowback from the imperial power's activities induce cognitive dissonance. Instead of such cognitive crises leading to a return to reality, they lead to denial amongst this elite. This elite lives in a bubble. Their discourse is intellectually incestuous and anybody that threatens this bubble is ostracized. Limits are set to what can be debated. That is why realists like John Mearsheimer, Steve Walt, Michael Scheuer and Stephen Cohen are ignored by this elite even though their ideas are very germane. If other countries don't bow down to their dictates, they have only a combination of the following responses: sanctions, regime change and chaos. The paradox is that the more they double down with their delusions the more the country's power continues to decline. My only hope is that this doubling down will not take the world down with it. ..."

"linear"?, I would say amateurish and often stupid!
It seems that the USA cannot see far enough as it's submitted to regime changes every 5 years
and decisions are finally left to powerful lobbies that have a better continuity.

Provided the gross flaws of the intelligence, one has to wonder about the quality of the
education in politics provided by Harvard and other expensive universities.. What they seem to
learn very well there is lying.

"Linear" and all that is the mushy feel-good stuff on top of your arrogance. Kleptocracy only
NOW putting down its roots? Come on. Let's get back to the 90's where it started. Vengeance for
9/11? Cover?

It seems the, "Mission Possible" of the alphabet agencies is not intelligence, but chaos.
All's well in the world with them as long as the USSA is grinding away on some near helpless
ME country. Drugs and other natural resources flow from and death and destruction flow to the
unsuspecting Muslim targets.

With America, you're our friend, (or at least we tolerate you) until you're not (or we don't),
then God help you and your innocent hoards.

The organized and well scripted chaos has been just one act in the larger play of destroying
western civilization with throngs of Muslims now flooding western Europe and to a lesser degree,
USA. Of course, the Deep State had felt confident in allowing Latinos to destroy America...Trump
has put a large crimp in the pipeline--one of the reasons he is hated so badly by the destructive
PTB.

Your analysis of linearity is interesting. However, you make what I believe is a critical error.
You assume you know the objective and the path to follow and base your critique accordingly.

It is entirely possible that the underlying objective of, for instance, invading Iraq was to
win a war and bring democracy. Subsequent behaviour in Iraq (and Afghanistan) indicates that there
might be (likely is) a hidden but central other objective. I do not want to state that I know
what that is because I am not "in the know". However, much that you attribute to failure from
linear thinking just as easily can be explained by the complexity of realizing a "hidden agenda".

Perhaps we can learn from history. Did the U.S. enter the First World War to save the world
and democracy, or was it a game of waiting until the sides were exhausted enough that victory
would be a walkover, the prize a seat at the center of power and the result that the U.S. could
now take advantage of a superior position over the now exhausted former superpowers, having sat
out the worst of the fighting and sold to both sides at a healthy profit?

Invading Afghanistan and Iraq gives the U.S. a dominant role in the center of the Asian
continent, the position coveted by Britain, Russia, France and the Ottoman Empire during the Great
Power rivalry leading up to the Great War. It can be seen as partial success in a policy of encirclement
of Russia and China. Redefining the Afghanistan and Iraq wars along these lines make them look
more successful, not less, however odious we may thing these objectives might be from moral and
international law perspectives.

Russia learnt a huge lesson from their experience in Afghanistan. There they retreated in the
face of a violent Wahabist insurgency and paid the price. The Soviet union collapsed and became
vulnerable to western free-market gangsterism as well as suffering the blowback of terrorism in
Chechnya, where they decided to play it very differently. A bit more like how Assad senior dealt
with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980's.

Russia knew that if ISIS and friends were allowed
to destroy Syria like the Mujahadeen had done in Afghanistan, then it would only be a matter of
time before blowback would come again to Russia.

Russia's involvement is entirely rational and in their national interest. It should never have
come as a surprise to the US, and the US should shake off their cold war propaganda and be grateful
that people are willing to put their lives on the line to defeat Wahabist terrorism. Russia has
played a focused line with integrity. Many Syrians love them for this, and many more in the Middle
East will likewise adopt a similar line.

In other words, the linear mindset blocks out all non-conforming realities in the present
and those contingent elements which might arise in the future

you mean non-conforming realities like the rule of law, and possible future contingencies
like war crimes tribunals?

i kinda skimmed this piece, but it seems to me that trying to write some kind of rational
analysis of a US foreign policy without mentioning the glaring fact that it's all absolutely illegal
strikes me as an exercise in confusion.

Really? Firstly, the author's focus on successful implementation of policy is misguided.
That the Iraq War was based on a lie, the Libyan bombing Campaign was illegal, and the Syrian
conflict was an illegal proxy war does not trouble him. And the strategic reasons for US long-term
occupation of Afghanistan escapes him.

Although he laments the failure to plan for contingencies, the words "accountable" and
"accountability" never appear in this essay. Nor does the word "neocon" - despite their being
the malignant driving force in US FP.

The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.
A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse
a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January [2007], Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is "a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,"
separating "reformers" and "extremists"; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation,
and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were "on the other side of that divide."

Lastly, Brenner's complaint that Obama has been "scape-goated" as having created ISIS conveniently
ignores Obama's allowing ISIS to grow by down-playing the threat that it represented. Obama's
called ISIS al Queda's "JV team" and senior intelligence analysts dutifully distorted intelligence
to down-play the threat (see below). This was one of many deceptions that Obama took part in -
if not orchestrated (others: "moderate rebels", Benghazi, the "Fiscal Cliff", bank bailouts).

After months of investigation, this much is very clear: from the middle of 2014 to the middle
of 2015, the United States Central Command's most senior intelligence leaders manipulated the
command's intelligence products to downplay the threat from ISIS in Iraq" . . .

The Joint Task Force can find no justifiable reason why operational reporting was repeatedly
used as a rationale to change the analytic product, particularly when the changes only appeared
to be made in a more optimistic direction . . .

There have been many lessons for the Russians since Afghanistan, two that Russia was directly
involved with were the 90's break-up of Yugoslavia in the 90's (and the diplomatic invention of
R2P) and the Chechen turmoil of the last decade.

Russia has also benefited through the non-linear analysis of US diplomacy failures of the last
two decades. Russia has created a coalition backing up their military entry into the Middle East
that allows achievement of tangible objectives at a sustainable cost.

But b's article is about the US's dismal diplomacy that is exacerbating its rapid empire decline
and it does very well to help explain the rigid lack of thought that hastens the deterioration
of US influence.

This article makes a lot of good points, but I didn't really grasp exactly what "linear" thinking
is. OK. Venezuela very well may be turning into a situation. What is the "linear" approach? What,
instead, would be the "non-linear" approach? This article cites many "linear" failures. It would
be helpful also to learn of some non-linear successes. If not by the United States then by somebody
else.

Let me clarify my prior posting. This article seems to be asserting that the United States
has attempted to pound the square peg of its policy objectives into the round hole of the Middle
East. I pretty much agree with that idea. But how is this "linear," as opposed to "bull-headed"?
How does being "non-linear" help with the pounding? Would not adapting our policies to pound a
round peg instead be just as "linear" but more clever?

The link to his bio on University
of Pitsburg site is broken and the page is gone, but it still exists for now in Google's cache
from Aug. 1st
here . His bio can also be found under
this ">https://www.theglobalist.com/united-states-common-man-forgotten-by-elites/">this
article from The Globalist

Everything I've read of Dr. Brenner that I've stumbled across is brilliant. My only gripe
with his work is that he always describes multiple aspects of psychopathy in his observations
of U.S. foreign policy and the Washington ruling elite, but never goes as far as to conclude the
root of all our problems are psychopathic individuals and institutions, or a culture of psychopathy
infesting larger groups of the same, e.g., Washington elite, "The Borg", etc.

While he is quite accurate in describing the symptoms, one is left with the impression that
they are the things to be fixed. Linear thinking in a U.S. foreign policy of aggression?
Absolutely, but it's pointless to 'fix' that without understanding the cause.

Linear thinking is precisely how Washington psychopaths think and execute once they have
identified a targeted population for subservience and eventual exploitation. It's a laser-like
focus on control using the tools psychopaths understand: money, guns and butter. U.S. leaders
use linear thinking because, as psychopaths, they do not have the ability to think otherwise.
Linear thinking give leaders control over how their subordinates think and execute. A culture
of psychopathy means subordinates and supporters will offer slavish devotion to such a linear
path. Anyone straying from the path is not insightful or innovative, they are rebels that sow
confusion and weaken leaders. They must be silenced and banished from the Washington tribe.

Does anyone in Washington REALLY want to 'save' the Persians and 'rebuild' Iran as they
imagine America did post WWII to German and Japan? Or is the more overriding intent to punish
and destroy a leadership that will not submit to the political and commercial interests in the
US? Of course the U.S. fails to deliver any benefits to the 'little people' after destroying their
country and government - they are incapable of understanding what the 'little people' want (same
goes for domestic issues in the U.S.).

The U.S. government and leadership do not need lessons to modify their techniques or 'thinking'
- they are incapable of doing so. You can't 'talk a psychopath into having empathy' any more than
you can talk them out of having smallpox. 'The law' and voting were intentionally broken in the
U.S. to make them all but useless to fix Washington, yet a zombified American public will continue
to use the religiously (or sit back and watch others use them religiously) with little result.
Because we're a democracy and a nation of laws - the government will fix anything broken with
those tools.

In a certain sense, I'm glad Brennan does NOT go on about psychopathy in his articles. He would
sound as tedious and nutty as I do here and would never be allowed near Washington. I'll just
be grateful for his thorough illustration of the symptoms for now.

Your analysis of linearity is interesting. However, you make what I believe is a critical error.
You assume you know the objective and the path to follow and base your critique accordingly.

First, this is more an analysis of military failure to "do the job" that Washington "strategic
thinkers" tell them to do, and the reasons why it's such a futile game. In our system of government,
the military does tactics, not strategy. And the above article, which should be passed out to
every politician in this country, isn't really about "the objective".

For example, the military was told "Go to Iraq, overthrow Saddam, everything will work
out once we get our contractors and corporations in after you." Paul Bremer's CPA and his "100
Orders" were supposed to fix everything. But the Iraqis objected strenuously to the oil privatization
selloff (and the rest of it) and the insurgency was launched. Okay, the military was told, break
the insurgency. In comes the CIA, Special Forces, mass surveillance - what comes out? Abu Ghraib
torture photos. The insurgency gets even stronger. Iran ends up winning the strategic game, hands
down, and has far more influence in Iraq than it could ever dream of during the Saddam era. The
whole objective, turning Iraq into a client state of the U.S. neoliberal order, utterly failed.

Here's the point I think you're missing: the Washington strategists behind all this
are batshit crazy and divorced from reality. Their objectives have to be rewritten every few
years, because they're hopeless pipe dreams. They live and work and breathe in these Washington
military-industrial think tanks, neocons and neoliberals both, that are largely financed by arms
manufacturers and associated private equity firms. As far as the defense contractors go, one war
is as good as another, they can keep selling arms to all regardless. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen,
Libya, Syria - cash cows is all they are. So, they finance the PR monkeys to keep pushing "strategic
geopolitical initiatives" that are really nonsensical and have no hope of working in the long
run - but who cares, the cash keeps flowing.

And if you want to know why the Borg State got firmly behind Hillary Clinton, it's because
they could see her supporting this agenda wholeheartedly, especially after Libya. Here's a comment
she wrote to Podesta on 2014-08-19, a long 'strategy piece' ending with this note:

Note: It is important to keep in mind that as a result of this policy there probably will be
concern in the Sunni regions of Iraq and the Central Government regarding the possible expansion
of KRG controlled territory. With advisors in the Peshmerga command we can reassure the concerned
parties that, in return for increase autonomy, the KRG will not exclude the Iraqi Government
from participation in the management of the oil fields around Kirkuk, and the Mosel Dam hydroelectric
facility. At the same time we will be able to work with the Peshmerga as they pursue ISIL into
disputed areas of Eastern Syria, coordinating with FSA troops who can move against ISIL from
the North. This will make certain Basher al Assad does not gain an advantage from these operations.
Finally, as it now appears the U.S. is considering a plan to offer contractors as advisors
to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, we will be in a position to coordinate more effectively between
the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army.

It's all nonsense, there's no FSA just Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates, plus the Kurdish proxy
force is a long-term dead end - but it keeps the war going. A more rational approach - work with
Russia to defeat ISIS, don't worry about economic cooperation between Syria and Iran, tell the
Saudis and Israelis that Iran won't invade them (it won't), pull back militarily and focus instead
on domestic problems in the USA - the think tanks, defense contractors, Saudi and Israeli lobbyists,
they don't like that.

Regardless, it looks like end times for the American empire, very similar to how the Soviet
Union collapsed in the 1980s, and the last days of the French and British empires in the 1950s.
And good riddance, it's become a dead weight dragging down the standard of living for most American
citizens who aren't on that gravy train.

Brenner is trying to mislead us with bombastic terminology like "The Linear Mindset". The
root cause of America's problems is what Michael Scheuer calls Imperial Hubris: The idea that
they are Masters of the Universe and so they have omnipotent power to turn every country into
a vassal. But when this hubris meets reality, they get confused and don't know what to do. In
such a case, they resort to three standard actions: sanctions, regime change or chaos. If these
three don't work, they repeat them!

Politicians are mere puppets. Their real owners are the 1% who use the Deep State to direct
policy. Among this 1% there are zionists who have enormous influence on US Middle Eastern policy
and they use the neocons as their attack dogs to direct such policy. This hubris has caused so
much pain, destruction and death all over the world and it has also caused America so much economic
damage.

America is waning as a global power but instead of self-introspection and returning
to realism, they are doubling down on neocon policy stupidity. Putin, China and Iran are trying
to save them from their stupidity but they seem to be hell-bent on committing suicide. But I hope
the policy sophistication of Russia, China and Iran, as well as their military capabilities that
raise the stakes high for US military intervention will force the Masters of the Universe to see
sense and reverse their road to destruction.

There's a lot in both this piece and the comments. In a sense, I wonder if the core issue behind
the Neocon/Imperial mindset isn't a complete inability to see the other side's point of view.
Psychopathy, short-termism (a common fault in businesspeople), divorce from reality and hubris
are likely a good part of it, as somebody, Paveway IV, Makutwa and nonsense factory put it, but
the Neocons seem to suffer from something almost worse - a misguided belief in their own propaganda.
Even the psychopath manages to fake plausibility - although he has no empathy for the victim and
takes a thrill out of hurting them, he can still know enough about them to predict how they will
react and to fake empathy himself. This ability seems to be missing in the folk who send the troops
in. Here there seems to be the genuine but unquestioning belief in one's own infallibility - that
there is one right way of doing things to which all others must and will yield if enough pressure
is applied. The line by one of GWB's staff was, supposedly, that "we create our own reality".
It is this creation of a reality utterly divorced from the real world that seems to lead to disaster
every single time.

I would paraphrase critics of b that he (she?) has fallen into linearity trap: one point is the
resources spent by USA on wars of 21-st century (a lot), the second points are positive results
(hardly any), and an intellectual charge proceeds from A to B.

However between A and B there can be diversity of problems. We can stock enough gasoline, run
out of potable water. And indeed, you can encounter pesky terrain. I recall a family vacation
trip where we visited Natural Bridges National Monument and we proceeded to Arizona on an extremely
straight highway through pretty flat plateau. Then the pavement end, and the acrophobic designated
driver has to negotiate several 180* hairpins to get down on a cliff flanking Monument Valley.
After second inspection, the map had tiny letters "switchbacks" and a tiny fragment of the road
not marked with the pavement. Still better than discovering "bridge out" annotation on your map
only when you gaze at the water flowing between two bridge heads. (If I recall, during late 20-th
century Balkan intervention, US military needed a lot of time to cross Danube river that unexpectedly
had no functioning bridge where they wanted to operate. Landscape changes during a war.)

That said, military usually has an appreciation for terrain. But there are also humans. On
domestic side, the number of experts on those distant societies is small, and qualified experts,
minuscule. Because the qualified ones were disproportionally naysayers, the mere whiff if expertise
was treated as treason, and we had a purge of "Arabists". And it was of course worse in the lands
to charm and conquer. Effective rule requires local hands to follow our wishes, people who can
be trusted. And, preferably, not intensely hated by the locals they are supposed to administer.
And like with gasoline, water, food, etc. on a vacation trip (who forgot mosquito repellent!),
the list of needed traits is surprisingly long. Like viewing collaboration with Israel supporting
infidels as a mortal sin that can be perpetrated to spare the family from starvation (you can
recruit them, success!), but it has to be atoned through backstabbing (local cadres are disappointing).

Great analysis! This is an excellent example for why I read MOA at least once a day and most of
the comments! There's something of a sad irony that Trump has made at least some kind of effort
to thwart the neocons and their relentless rush toward armageddon, seeing as how lacking in any
real intellectual capcity they all seem and with Trump at the helm?

Mostly tptb, our political class, and the pundits for the masses, seem all to exhibit an astonishingly
dull witted lack of true concern or humanity for anybody anywhere, and in my years on earth so
far, at least in America, they have inculcated in the population very dubious ethical chioces,
which you would think were tragic, and decisions, which you would believe were doomed, from the
wars being waged, to the lifestyles of the citizenry especially toward the top of the economic
ladder, and I don't know about others here but I for one have been confronting and dealing with
these problems both in family and aquaintances for my entire adult life! Like the battle at Kurushetra.
At least they say they "have a plan," scoffingly.

Where is chipnik to weigh in on this with his poetic observations, or I think long ago it was
"slthrop" who may have been bannned for foul language as he or she raged on at the absurdities
that keep heaping up exponentially? I do miss them!

Oh well, life is relatively short and we will all be gone at some point and our presense here
will be one and all less than an iota. An awareness of this one fact and its implications you
would think would pierce the consciousness of every human being well before drawing their final
breath, but I guess every McCain fails to realize until too late that the jig is up?

Justin Glyn@20 "but the Neocons seem to suffer from something almost worse - a misguided belief
in their own propaganda."

The propaganda part is inventing, manufacturing and embellishing some embodiment of evil
that must be defeated to liberate their victims and save humanity. That's the cover story, not
the underlying purpose of U.S. aggression.

Neocons do not believe that exclusively as a goal in itself - it merely dovetails rather
nicely with their ultimate obsession with control, and it's and easy sell against any less-than-perfect
targeted foreign leader or government. Irrational demonization is the embodiment of that propaganda.

The methods of ultimately controlling the liberated people and their nation's resources are
cloaked in the guise of 'bringing Western democracy'. Methods for corrupting the resulting government
and usurping their laws and voting are hidden or ignored. The propaganda then turns to either
praising the resulting utopia or identifying/creating a new evil that now must also be eliminated.
The utopia thing hasn't worked out so well in Libya, Iraq or Ukraine, so they stuck with the 'defeat
evil' story.

Apart from psychopathy in US leadership, the US has no understanding, nor respect of, other cultures.
This is not just in US leadership, but in the exceptional people in general. It shows up from
time to time in comments at blogs like this, and is often quite noticeable in comments at SST.

That it why the US in its arrogance has failed in Syria, and Russia with its tiny force has
been so successful.

The essence of imperial hubris is the belief that one's country is omnipotent; that the country
can shape and create reality. The country's main aspiration is to create clients, dependencies
and as the Godfather Zbigniew Bzrezinski candidly put it, "vassals".Such a mindset does not just
appreciate the reality of contingency; it also does not appreciate the nature of complex systems.
The country's elites believe that both soft and hard power should be able to ensure the desired
outcomes. But resistance to imperial designs and blowback from the imperial power's activities
induce cognitive dissonance. Instead of such cognitive crises leading to a return to reality,
they lead to denial amongst this elite. This elite lives in a bubble. Their discourse is intellectually
incestuous and anybody that threatens this bubble is ostracized. Limits are set to what can be
debated. That is why realists like John Mearsheimer, Steve Walt, Michael Scheuer and Stephen Cohen
are ignored by this elite even though their ideas are very germane. If other countries don't bow
down to their dictates, they have only a combination of the following responses: sanctions, regime
change and chaos. The paradox is that the more they double down with their delusions the more
the country's power continues to decline. My only hope is that this doubling down will not take
the world down with it.

"Welcome to Hell!" is the slogan with which G20 protesters greet the self-appointed leaders
of the world to their summit on 7 and 8 July 2017 in Hamburg, Germany, under Madame Merkel's
auspices to discuss the calamities of our globe and how to resolve them. Never mind that the
distress of Mother Earth has been mostly caused by those who represent the West, and now pretend
to fix it.

How utterly arrogant – and hypocritical!

In the wake of the summit, police were beating on aggressively against the demonstrators, most
of them peaceful, unarmed; but some of them violent and hooded, as old tradition dictates, so
they will not be recognized as police themselves or patsies of the police. Many people were
hurt, several to the point of hospitalization. And the meeting just began.

... ... ...

This reminds of the prominent former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt's words, shortly
before his death, in an interview on terrorism to the German paper "Die Zeit", on 30 August
2007: "I suspect that all terrorists, whether they represent the German RAF, the Italian Brigate
Rosse, the French, the Irish, Spanish or Arabs, are relatively modest in their disdain for
humanity. They are largely surpassed by certain forms of state terrorism." – When the journalist
asked back, „Are you serious? Whom are you referring to?" Schmidt: "Let's leave it at that. I
really mean what I say" (http://www.zeit.de/2007/36/Interview-Helmut-Schmidt/seite-7 – in
German).

Only western megalo-psychopaths could have thought of 'creating', of nominating themselves into
an alliance, of which the ultimate goal is to forge a New World Order (NWO), at times also
called, One World Order, referring to an unspoken One Anglo-Zionist Government. That's where we
are headed; towards military oppression and financial subjugation of a small Zionist-headed
financial and military elite.

It's still time to wake up, to take our lives into our own hands, shed the mainstream propaganda
and blood-thirsty lie-media, ignore them; get out from under the fraudulent privately owned fake
dollar monetary system. There are alternatives available. We have to see them, then choose them.
It is up to us to let go of the ever oppressing west. But each one of us, has to see the light,
the little spark, that tells him or her – that there is something drastically wrong with the
life we live, have been living for the last hundred years, that peace is just around the corner,
but we have been duped into wars, after wars, after bloody conflict – and wars again. We are
dozed with the idea that conflict and aggression is the Big Normal, as it is always inspired and
provoked by 'others' – mostly by the east. Yes, we believe it. It's comfortable, and it would be
inconvenient having to admit that we have been living a lie – a blatant lie all or most of our
lives. Admitting it, and standing up for justice, would be saving ourselves and civilization –
maybe even humanity.

... ... ..

After debating supportive mechanisms like wars and the lie-propaganda – Goebbels would be proud
– economy and finance will have center stage. How to speed up financial globalization to attain
in the shortest span of time 'Full Spectrum financial and monetary Dominance'? – The western
economy is running on empty – its main thriving force is greed and instant profit by a few.
Privatization of all state assets is part of the final run. The people are left behind. The
people, the lot that needs to consume to fulfill for an ever-tinier elite the abject target of
greed for 'more and more', the insatiable appetite. These people will soon vegetate in a
sucked-dry space, robbed of social infrastructure and welfare.

What's left is the enslavement by debt. To survive, people may commit to the 'debt-row',
gradually converting into the death-row. As un-behaving countries are forced to do – swallowing
debt against being fed minimal rations for survival. Greece is the epitome of this razors-sharp
knife that slashed throats as well as the last goblet of the lifeline to survival. Solidarity is
nowhere.

The dying beast is lashing out, right and left and above and beneath. It is desperate; itself on
death-row, but if it must die, then dying we must all – the deadly grip of the rabies-diseased
dog that won't let go. And won't let go. And won't let go to the last minute – or until death
reigns over us all. That's the risk we are running. A nuclear holocaust where, as Mr. Putin said
already on a number of occasions, nobody will survive. The G20 know it.

Um, of course, all countries are run by psychopath, how do you think you get to the top of
society by hugging? In a functional society the high-IQ long term psychopaths rule, in a
dysfunctional the low-IQ short term psychopaths rule.

.an imaginary society of exactly one hundred adults, in a group that conforms precisely to
know statistics. This means that of the one hundred people in my hypothetical society, 4 are
psychopaths – they have no conscience. Of the remaining 96 decent citizens, all of whom
do have consciences, 62.5% will obey authority more or less without question, quite possibly
the authority of one of the more aggressive and controlling sociopaths in the crowd. This
leaves 36 people who have both conscience and the strength to bear the burdens of their
actions, a little more than a third of the group. These are not impossible odds, but they are
not easy ones, either.

You are not far from the truth regarding who takes the lead in the riots and plundering. Such
events have been always hijacked by those forces in the dark to make the confusion greater and
throwing the peaceful demonstrators under their yoke. Now, leftist and rightists are under the
same umbrella of anarchy. That's why the shock felt by the Hamburger citizens and by different
politicians in Germany from different parties. Somebody is laughing in the shadow.

Maybe those crowds are doing the work of George Soros, maybe they're doing the work of other
paymasters (i. e. agent provocateurs) in order to push for more militarization of police. For
the first time after WW II, since 2016 German military is allowed to assist the police in case
of emergency.

German citizens got sold out by their politicians on privacy as well. Just recently the
German parliament bypassed the Federal Council and voted for a (probably by purpose very
vaguely phrased) law permitting security forces to spy on citizens – all in the same of
internal security.

Please kindly note in the city where Airbus is at home, the builder of Eurocopters, there is
not a single helicopter with a firefighting bucket to douse any fire during the G20 protests.
Never mind that there must be at least one helicopter for every head of state on standby during
this event.

For the millions being spent on security it was impossible to predict or to furnish fire
extinguishers in large quantity around the perimeters of the meeting venue (sarcasm).

According to residents of the Schanzenviertel interviewed on video shown at Der Spiegel, the
craziness continued for three hours before any policemen showed up. I think this video was made
the day after the riot.

Strangely, now I cannot find that particular video, which shows bulldozers cleaning up piles
of bricks and other projectiles pulled up from the streets and thrown at shop windows, etc.

Is the West governed by psychopaths? I don't think so; just an average bad vintage of normal
human beings.
"The banality of evil" ! Hannah Arendt.
"Broad and easy, the highway to destruction; narrow and difficult, the path to salvation". !
Rabbi Yeshuah of Nazareth.
"Hell is immense, and very powerful". ! Saint Faustina Kowalska of Poland.

In reply to the question posed by the title of this article Why would anyone ask this question?
The answer is more than obvious, in that their actions speak rather loudly. Do they ever listen
to the wishes of the people? Do they ever really seek peace? NO.

Nice that you placed that link, I've also read this incredible story about this moron.

May I add to this, that sometimes still something 'leaks' from the very secretive Bilderberg
conference. There are no minutes taken (wise, while John Podesta had all his mails stolen
clicking on a phishing mail. The same happened to Hillary, it was even a porn link that she
clicked upon).

Apparantly on the first Bilderberg conferences, the start speaker told the audience 'We are
God's gift to mankind'.

Vot Tak,
Are you saying that the left-wing press is cheering on violent protesters?
And that this press is aligned with Netanyahu?
I don't see how that would parse. I mean, Netanyahu is a far-right maniac, as far as I can see
(except for maybe his "pan-nationalism" type of neoliberalism, which I guess technically is
sort of left compared to "nationalism," which the "left" now calls " right.") It seems to me t
hat that leaves us with the fact that the protesters, since they actually probably align more
closely with the "right" than the "left" by definition if they are protesting global finance,
etc.

So who says the protesters (violent ones) are left in the first place? Did anyone ask them
whether they are "left" or "right"?? Or the nonviolent ones, too, for that matter? They might
all be so addled t hat they don't know anymore whether they are "left" or "right." Soros has
screwed things up big-time!

we definitely are ruled by psychopaths at least in the Anglo-Saxon world. That is the biggest
problem we have nowadays I think. They are great actors, often charming (not all of them are
i.e. Hilary), they are great actors, tell their victims exactly what they want to hear in order
to get into positions of power.

Most importantly, psychopaths cannot care about others even if they want to – it's the
nature of their sickness.

I started learning about psychos after reading Steve Job's biography. I was on a holiday in
Greece and had nothing else to read – I expected some insights on design etc – I
was really shocked to see how outrageously crazy he was. Then a friend told me he was a
psychopath so I ordered all the best books I could find on the subject.
Having psychos in positions of power if like putting a fox in charge of a hen-house.

Nothing will change until more people learn how to identify psychos and prevent them from doing
damage.

I started a blog on the subject but only had one post so far. I'd like to research and write
more but I don't have much time:
http://www.idpsychos.com/

I enjoyed reading your article. Most of the conclusions and opinions that you make,
I agree with.
"The West" can no longer sustain themselves as before, they need constant
wars and inequality. What is really disgusting is that they don't even treat their own
citizens well. It is really a war between corporate greed and humanity.
Thanks for a great
article!

The engineer, Susan Fowler (who left Uber in December and now works for Stripe), posted
the account to her blog on Sunday, calling it a "strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying
story."

It is indeed horrifying. Sexism is a well-documented problem in Silicon Valley, but the
particulars of Fowler's account are astounding. She says problems began on day one, when her manager
accosted her with details of his sex life: "

In my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages
over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy
time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said,
but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It
was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line
that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.

When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though
this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense,
and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to.

Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews
from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just
an innocent mistake on his part.

As much as Slashdot likes to believe that sexism is imaginary, this behavior is pretty common
in tech. Frankly, I've seen worse.

OK, so you start with the strawman that "Slashdot," whoever that is, likes to believe that
sexism is imaginary. But, then you say you've seen worse? I'm a software engineer in the auto
industry, and I have never seen anything like what she describes. I'm not saying it doesn't happen.
But, if you've seen worse, you have worked in some horrific work environments.

I see an allegation with no facts. Anyone working in IT understands how to make a screenshot,
if not how to log a chat session. Yet no evidence is presented, and what would the easiest
thing be for this person to do? Save evidence, because sexual harassment is ILLEGAL.

Your claim (repeated) that you have to be the victim to see sexual harassment on the scale
she is claiming is moronic. It would be visible to at least everyone on that team. There would
be more than one claim from more than one person if it was that rampant. In the event it was
just her and she over-hyped the scale, she could have this thing called evidence. Yet there
is no evidence, just allegations. I'll wait for the court case, and would be willing to bet
a paycheck that no evidence is forthcoming.

Sorry, but there are no groups of dudes hanging around conspiring on how to fuck over, and
fuck, women in the company. Quite the opposite, since the virtue signalling SJWs are rampant
in SF and would have busted the boss to make a name for themselves.

You clearly didn't RTFA. She has extensive email and chat records to back up her claims. Yes,
I am taking her word for it. But if you are accusing her of lying about it, it is you who need
to provide evidence.

And yes, there actually are groups of dudes conspiring how to fuck women at the company. Not
at every company of course. But I have seen such things at jobs I have had.

I see an allegation with no facts. Anyone working in IT understands how to make a screenshot,
if not how to log a chat session. Yet no evidence is presented, and what would the easiest
thing be for this person to do? Save evidence, because sexual harassment is ILLEGAL.

The article mentions that she does indeed have that evidence. Why does she not present this
evidence? Probably because to do so might be illegal. I believe she has the legal right to retain
that documentation for the sole purpose of legal action (as either defendant or complainant) and
no right to publish it (as it is technically copyright of Uber as she was work-for-hire at the
time).

If she was lying, Uber would most likely sue her for defamation/libel/slander in short order,
and she would get burned because she wouldn't have the long trail of evidence that she mentioned
in the article.

Your claim (repeated) that you have to be the victim to see sexual harassment on the scale
she is claiming is moronic. It would be visible to at least everyone on that team. There would
be more than one claim from more than one person if it was that rampant.

She explicitly states that there was, and that she had talked to several coworkers who had
experienced it.

Sorry, but there are no groups of dudes hanging around conspiring on how to fuck over, and
fuck, women in the company.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy -- negative attitudes aren't conscious.

Quite the opposite, since the virtue signalling SJWs are rampant in SF and would have busted
the boss to make a name for themselves.

For example: you're sexist, but you think you're not, because you think it's all "SJWs", rather
than people who have been genuinely mistreated. In this case, the woman gives a very detailed
account, directly referring to matters on company record. Within an hour of picking up the phone,
Uber's legal team would have had enough information to know whether this was credible or not.
As Uber's official response was "conducting an internal investigation" rather than "completely
baseless", I don't believe her claims can be easily dismissed at this point. And yet you believe
you are taking a rational approach, even though you are disregarding the facts at hand -- attitude,
not conspiracy.

Notable quotes:

"... At least according to the article, the HR person was not being honest. They said that it was the boss's first offense and they didn't want to put it on his record because it would hurt him. But the author spoke to other women who had complained about him before she did, so it wasn't his first offense. The most generous interpretation is that they were basing the claim of first offense on his blank official record, so that he could get an infinite number of "first" offenses left off. ..."

"... in this case the her immediate superior opened on day 1 with "I'm in an open relationship, please have sex with me". Later she finds out that HR is basically encouraging him by taking no action against a "high flyer", which explains why he (correctly) thinks he can get away with it. ..."

"... There is a difference between treating a complaint as "credible" and treating it as "factual". My problem here isn't that people are doubting the allegations, but that they're outright dismissing the credibility of them. They should be taken seriously, and they should be investigated, and yes, no-one should be pronouncing judgement without access to the full facts. ..."

"... 1. Apparently the boss did not make sex a condition of continued employment. ..."

"... 2. Her first response should have been to say, ..."

"... The rest of her "explosive blog" goes on to talk about bog standard industry stuff. ..."

One can hope that is the case now. I will relate a situation I was very close to at one of
the VERY LARGE PETROLEUM companies that started with sexism and misogyny and ended in tragedy.

In the mid 90's my father became romantically involved with a woman at work who was employed
as an executive assistant in another department. As their relationship evolved she confided in
him that not only was she the recipient of unwanted advances from a certain employee in the sales
department, but she had heard from other female employees that they have been harassed, fondled,
and even sexually assaulted by this person. Apparently his favorite tactic was to offer to take
a young lady to lunch. Then he would mention having left his wallet at home and that they would
stop there for a moment to get it. He would invite the young woman inside and then assault her.
Management's response to this had been to move this salesperson around the US, kind of like the
Catholic church did with pedophiles in their employ. This salesperson was a "high performer" and
made the company significant profits, and was protected by the HR department and managers from
retaliation.

My father, having a firmly defined standard of fairness and an even more deeply entrenched
allergy to injustice, decided to do something about this sexual predator. Over a period of almost
2 years he managed to use the internal electronic message board at the company to rally enough
employees into speaking up and the man was eventually fired. In one of the craziest twists of
fate ever this person ended up in my industry, working at my company as a salesperson. My father
and I have the same exact name, sans the suffix so he had to know who I was.

He also knew one of my coworkers. A stout christian woman, deeply involved in one of the largest
churches in our city, and she vouched for his upright character, his beautiful wife and children,
and their wonderful christian character. Then after about 4 months on the job he decided he had
had enough. He left work in the middle of the day and went home with a purpose. He first killed
their 19 year old nanny. It was later learned he had been having an affair with her. Then he killed
his two children, 20 months and 3 months, followed by his wife, aged 36. All of them were murdered
by stabbing. The police described it as a "very brutal, violent scene, lots of blood."

After killing his family the scumbag in question stabbed himself, shot himself, and drank rat
poison. When these methods of ending his life did not work he drove about 70 miles outside of
town, parked his car on the side of the road, and stepped out in front of a 18 wheeler cruising
down the freeway, thus ending his miserable life.

I can only imagine how this situation might have developed differently if only the company
he worked for had not decided to protect this awful human being from the consequences he deserved.
Maybe if he had been fired right away with the first offense he would not have progressed to where
he killed his entire family and then offed himself.

Whatever the conditions were that eventually led to this, the initial seed of this problem
was how he viewed people, especially women, around him. This was, I am sure, exacerbated by his
company defending him. Maybe in his mind he thought he was entitled to do with women as he pleased.
I don't know. Whatever the reasons are, I see this as a condemnation of sexist activity of this
type, as it belies a lack of concern for and malice toward others that resulted in someone killing
4 people and then themselves.

So, I would recommend to anyone who encounters this kind of activity, report it immediately.
Don't feel flattered. Get evidence. Remove that person from the workplace immediately and hopefully
place them in prison. You are dealing with a predator who does not care for you one bit. They
see you as an object that they deserve. Something they can take, use, and discard without a flicker
of emotion. Your life could be at stake. Or, maybe the lives of a couple of innocent children.

Let me ask you a simple question. Ignoring the sexism, which doesn't apply to you, read her
description of the corporate culture and tell me: does this sound like a place you'd like to work?

It isn't just sexism, she describes a generally toxic work culture in which all kinds of problems
can arise and persist. It's one where managers are focused on competing with each other, even
to the point of undermining their supervisors; you might let a problem ride for a bit because
you might need to use it against them later.

Now granted, this might not be a fair description of Uber's culture. Or her perceptions might
be colored by what was a string of bad luck. But we all know places that shade this way exist.
The problem of a organizations that are at the same time bureaucratic and cutthroat go way back.
What she describes could be the politics of an old-time royal court.

Why? Why does this kind of culture crop up again and again in human history?

I think because ruthless internal competition offsets some of the natural lethargy of a bureaucracy.
It can serve the interests of whoever is on top, at least in the short term. If you have no talent
for inspiring people you can at least set them against each other. But you'd be a fool to join
such an organization at the bottom, knowing what it is, if you had any alternatives.

You've limited the scope to "quid pro quo" sexual harassment. The article demonstrates "hostile
environment" sexual harassment. There's no requirement that "compliance is made a condition of
continued employment or advancement".
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/type...
[eeoc.gov]

Even so, in every bit of coaching that I have ever seen, there is a requirement of: request,
rebuff, request again, escalate, unless the references are "to the reasonable person" offensive
in the extreme.

That also seems to follow the legal doctrine on the matter. An advance is considered normal
and human (if stupid, from a manager), the repeated advance in the face of clear rejection causes
the condition to rise to harassment. This goes for passive things like, a mudflap girl coffee
mug, inappropriate humor, etc.

I agree that the victim should escalate early and often for their own protection and documentation,
but the HR person (if they were being honest) did the right thing. If we went around firing everyone
for the first inappropriate thing they ever did the manpower churn itself would be a viable alternative
power source.

I'm not a lawyer, advisor, or necessarily reasonable. I'm just old enough to see this go around
multiple times, sometimes having negotiated successful resolutions... sometime having quit MY
JOB because of the treatment of peer and the company's response.

At least according to the article, the HR person was not being honest. They said that it
was the boss's first offense and they didn't want to put it on his record because it would hurt
him. But the author spoke to other women who had complained about him before she did, so it wasn't
his first offense. The most generous interpretation is that they were basing the claim of first
offense on his blank official record, so that he could get an infinite number of "first" offenses
left off.

It goes to show why that approach is a bad one. If you don't want people to get in trouble
for a first offense, make that the policy. Put the offense in their record, but give them a free
pass for it when it comes time to evaluate them. But leaving something out of the record makes
it possible for somebody to get an indefinite number of "first offenses". Of course it seems far
more likely that there was an informal policy of protecting offenders who were otherwise high
performing, and the whole thing about it being a first offense was a ruse.

That doesn't seem unreasonable, but in this case the her immediate superior opened on day
1 with "I'm in an open relationship, please have sex with me". Later she finds out that HR is
basically encouraging him by taking no action against a "high flyer", which explains why he (correctly)
thinks he can get away with it.

That doesn't seem unreasonable, but in this case the her immediate superior opened on day
1 with "I'm in an open relationship, please have sex with me". Later she finds out that HR
is basically encouraging him by taking no action against a "high flyer", which explains why
he (correctly) thinks he can get away with it.

Allegedly.

After Ellen Pao, UNLV, Duke LaCrosse, and countless false police reports (resulting in legal
action) about discrimination I'm waiting for evidence. Chat logs, screen shots, and email logs
should be enough to prove the case. TFA reports no such evidence.

Innocence until proven guilty should have meaning to all Americans, but seems like many are
fine prosecuting without evidence let alone proof.

There is NO, Zero, Zip, NADA Shred, of evidence provided in TFA. Her claiming to have evidence
is the same exact value as her claiming she was harassed. Both are possible, but neither are demonstrated
with any facts. Considering that there were plenty of alleged "facts" with the UNLV rape hoax,
and the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax, and Ellen Pao's discrimination case, the fake Muslim hate crime
in NYC we should _all_ be demanding and waiting for evidence prior to making assumptions. "Hands
up don't shoot", Duke Lacrosse, and countless other hoaxes have ruined plenty of lives. Numerous
"news" agencies were caught faking and fabricating video and audio to support the narratives.

There is NO, Zero, Zip, NADA Shred, of evidence provided in TFA. ... we should _all_ be demanding and waiting for evidence prior to making assumptions.
"Hands up don't shoot", Duke Lacrosse, and countless other hoaxes have ruined plenty of lives.

There is a difference between treating a complaint as "credible" and treating it as "factual".
My problem here isn't that people are doubting the allegations, but that they're outright dismissing
the credibility of them. They should be taken seriously, and they should be investigated, and
yes, no-one should be pronouncing judgement without access to the full facts.

However, when you talk about false accusations that have ruined lives, you are presumably talking
about people who named other people in their accusations, which Fowler didn't do. The only life
on the line here is her own, and as someone whose career is on the rise, she has a lot to lose.
No doubt there's been a spike in orders for her book (currently a best-seller on Amazon) and so
there's the possibility she's doing this for short-term gain, but the damage to her reputation
would be inestimable if this turned out to be false, and she would appear to be an intelligent
enough person that she wouldn't risk throwing away an entire career this early on just to increase
sales for a week or two.

1. Apparently the boss did not make sex a condition of continued employment.

He's her boss. That's ALWAYS implied or always the risk.

2. Her first response should have been to say,

Actually I think her first response should have been to knock out his teeth. Failing that going
straight to HR was entirely appropriate. Propositioning a subordinate like that is so far out
of line that there is no way she is in any way responsible for trying to smooth things over.

The rest of her "explosive blog" goes on to talk about bog standard industry stuff.

The reason the industry is infested with problems like this is because of people like you.
Oh sure I mean you might not actually do any of those things yourself, but you defend others that
do and when the defense fails, you excuse the behaviour as "standard".

I think the main problem here is that the superior propositioned the subordinate. This is problematic,
as when she refuses, which she did, she was still dependent on him, and it was easy for him to
punish her for her refusal. Of course, he still could put care on treating her the same, but obviously
this is something very hard to prove, and therefore the best approach would be to ban this behavior.

Generally though, assuming or expecting that every employee lives in a happy relationship and
doesn't want any new ones is just not realistic. Employees will seek relationships and generally
this doesn't cause any harm to anybody, just when the power relations are so direct like with
direct superior and subordinate its a problem.

Men value women differently than women value men. I saw something from Tinder that like 20%
of the men on Tinder are hooking up with 80% of the women. And there was an OK Cupid study that
when asked to rank women as above or below average, men ranked 50% of the women above average,
and 50% of the women below average. The women ranked 80% of the men "below average." Hmmmm.

Note that sexism was a *small* part of the situation described. What amazes me was the continued
desire to work for a company because of the 'great engineers'.

The reality is you can find a *good* company that also has great engineers. Other companies
also face interesting challenges that are worthy of your time. I've seen people fall into this
trap of toiling under crappy management because 'their team is so great'. The problem is that
crappy management gets all the benefits of your awesome teams work (in fact, in crappy management,
the management gets nearly *all* the glory and your 'awesome engineers' are the first under the
bus when good times are over, after months on end of 60+ hour workweeks, where the management
is only around for part of maybe 3 days a week. You need to find a company that has both a great
team *and* good management.

If it had been an isolated incident with one manager, and switching teams fixed it, but she
reports a pattern of management dysfunction that seems pervasive, at least to wherever she could
go. Now it *might* be the case that her perspective by itself is skewed, but in her view of things,
it was a terrible situation and she stayed *way* longer than anyone should have.

I agree with the people on here saying we need more evidence that one person writing a blog
about their side of the story to know what REALLY took place. But that's a whole lot of writing
just to make up a fictional tale of how sexist things are at Uber. I'm inclined to believe it's
probably at least generally true.

But assuming it's factual? Why put up with all of that for a year and then write a blog about
how you were wronged? If you really did the right thing, saving all of the chats and email conversations
-- the obvious next step is a lawsuit.

I *hate* dealing with attorneys and their shady billing practices ... but if there was ever a time to deal with them, I think *this* would be it! You're
making accusations that H.R. staff broke the law multiple times in handling your complaints, and
you were blocked from a promotion by someone going in and modifying a FINAL performance review
(without even telling you it would be changed first). I see a whole lot of "sexual harassment"
complaints that are largely baseless "he said, she said" garbage. (I used to work for a firm where
one of the I.T. guys bought some flowers for the front office receptionist after she was out sick
for a while. The card with them was your basic "Get Well Soon" message. She ran to H.R. and filed
a complaint against him. THAT is the kind of stuff that's NOT a valid complaint. That's how you
ruin things for nice guys and encourage an office environment where nobody gives a crap about
each other.) But this story sounds like, especially in the state of California, you've got the
law clearly on your side.

i think my main concern with evolutionary psychology is by
rationalising these behaviours as being the result of long term
trends there is no way of explaining substantial changes in behaviour
over time. and we know, despite the daily mails best efforts, that
british culture (for example) is less aggressive and sexist than it
was 50 years ago, 100 years ago etc. although there's still a long
ways to go...

Some of that is likely to be genetic. Really aggressive people tend
to get weeded out of civilised societies either by committing crime and
then either being executed or jailed. The other route of course is to go
to war, and not come back.

Other influences are that as society becomes less aggressive and more
law abiding more children know their fathers and live with them. We know
that boys in particular raised without their fathers tend to be more
aggressive than those raised by them.

As for less sexism I think rather paradoxically that we can blame the
wars for that, the industrial ones at least when women were needed to
keep the country running so the men could go off and fight. Of course
when they came back there was a shortage of men so some women were
needed to go on working. This increased in the second and even though
the Fifties were supposedly an era of housewives this was only part of
the story. The interesting thing is how it was kept going afterwards
when there 'enough' men again. I suspect that the white heat of
technology was to blame here, the increasing complexity of industry,
technology, university expansion etc meant our societies simply needed
the intelligence, knowledge, dexterity etc of women, so not only did the
men learn to value them by working alongside them but they had the
economic independence to demand less sexism.

You are right to be skeptical of evolutionary psych that considers
only Western people but not all of it does and that tendency should not
be used to damn the entire field. As Trivers points out not just our
primate relatives but creatures like scrub jays have been shown to
employ deceit. We know at what stage our infants are able to deploy it,
Trivers points out that the more intelligent we are the more likely we
are to lie. So therefore it is not unreasonable to think it is somehow
hardwired in us. Whether that means there are genes for
deceit
there may well be neural circuits for it, tied into things like mirror
neurons that give us theory of mind.

Also while it is true that we are not slaves to all of our evolution
laden tendencies it does not follow that we are entirely free of all of
them. For eg while it is possible to stare oneself to death in the face
of food, not many have managed to take the much shorter route to death
of voluntarily refusing to drink. We have biochemical pathways to enable
us to endure periods when food is scarce or absent or we are stupid
enough to try Dr Atkins's diet. We can scavenge water from our food and
stave off thirst that way but we cannot stave off thirst itself. The
body has only limited ways of generating water. Burning carbs or fat
will give you some but by far not enough for more than about 3 days max.

Genes were responsible, somehow, for you fighting the whirlwind to
save your sister, but probably not your less related cousin, and
certainly not the stranger from down the road.

This is only one reason for altruism. Among social animals, altruism
is probably much more to do with evolutionary game theory: we generally
cooperate with everyone, but defect on anyone who has previously
defected on us - a
tit-for-tat
strategy, which is beneficial for
the individual (or for its genes) and can lead to robust global
cooperation.

80 reviews of Amazon.

The best book for any person who wants to understand how ... , February 29, 2016

The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win (Paperback)

The best book for any person who wants to understand how American Courts work! At times we all
ask questions like "How can this criminal get off on technicalities if it is obvious that he/she
committed crime?", or "How can this be fair?" or "How can a lawyer defend this "bad guy/girl"?
This is totally wrong! He/she is a criminal!" The author explains the difference between law and
common sense, law and ethics, understanding of crime in legal terms and in laymen words.The book
closely examines the logical reasoning of the law professionals , demonstrating the "tricks" used
in court rooms. Fascinating reading!!!

WARNING: the book will not prepare you to go to court and
defend your case! This is not a "how-to" manual for folks who are planning to go to court. Hire
a lawyer if need be.

However, if you want to learn how to present and defend your point (any point, not just legal
issues) as an intelligent and convincing person, this book is for you! Chances are, by the time
you are done with debating your next case, your opponents will at least respect your opinion (or
hate your guts, which still might give you some satisfaction).

This book is for anyone who wants to boost up their skills in logical persuasion, finding loopholes
in opponent's logical reasoning.

Lots of interesting and valuable information for a pretty small price! It is written in a short
and clear format: each chapter discusses specific idea, giving examples from court cases and average
daily life (parent-child, husband-wife, employee-supervisor), concluding with a practical application
summary argument vs. counterargument.

So, no reason to read the entire book from beginning to end. One can just pick any chapter
and read about how this or that legal (logical) rule can be applied in daily life.

Notable quotes:

"... The Psychopath Whisperer ..."

"... a kid who is 8, 9, or 10 years old commits a transgression or a crime while alone, without the pressure of peers. This reflects an interior impulse toward harm. Criminal versatility-committing different types of crimes in different settings-can also hint at future psychopathy. ..."

"... That really happened? ..."

"... The second hallmark of a psychopathic brain is an overactive reward system especially primed for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement. ..."

"... Their brains ignore cues about danger or punishment. "There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that something bad can happen," says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University. "If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you'll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you'll be less likely to learn from your mistakes." ..."

Researchers
shy away from calling children psychopaths; the term carries too much stigma, and too much determinism.
They prefer to describe children like Samantha as having "callous and unemotional traits," shorthand
for
a cluster of characteristics and behaviors , including a lack of empathy, remorse, or guilt;
shallow emotions; aggression and even cruelty; and a seeming indifference to punishment. Callous
and unemotional children have no trouble hurting others to get what they want. If they do seem caring
or empathetic, they're probably trying to manipulate you.

... ... ...

Researchers believe that two paths can lead to psychopathy: one dominated by nature, the other
by nurture. For some children, their environment-growing up in poverty, living with abusive parents,
fending for themselves in dangerous neighborhoods -- can turn them violent and coldhearted. These kids
aren't born callous and unemotional; many experts suggest that if they're given a reprieve from their
environment, they can be pulled back from psychopathy's edge.

But other children display callous and unemotional traits even though they are raised by loving
parents in safe neighborhoods. Large studies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have found that
this early-onset condition is highly hereditary, hardwired in the brain-and especially difficult
to treat. "We'd like to think a mother and father's love can turn everything around," Raine says.
"But there are times where parents are doing the very best they can, but the kid-even from the get-go-is
just a bad kid."

Still, researchers stress that a callous child-even one who was born that way-is not automatically
destined for psychopathy. By some estimates, four out of five children with these traits do not grow
up to be psychopaths. The mystery-the one everyone is trying to solve-is why some of these children
develop into normal adults while others end up on death row.

A trained eye can spot a callous and unemotional child by age 3 or 4. Whereas normally developing
children at that age grow agitated when they see other children cry -- and either try to comfort them
or bolt the scene-these kids show a chilly detachment. In fact, psychologists may even be able to
trace these traits back to infancy. Researchers at King's College London tested more than 200 five-week-old
babies, tracking whether they preferred looking at a person's face or at a red ball. Those who favored
the ball displayed more callous traits two and a half years later.

As a child gets older, more-obvious warning signs appear. Kent Kiehl, a psychologist at the University
of New Mexico and the author of The Psychopath Whisperer , says that one scary harbinger
occurs when a kid who is 8, 9, or 10 years old commits a transgression or a crime while alone, without
the pressure of peers. This reflects an interior impulse toward harm. Criminal versatility-committing
different types of crimes in different settings-can also hint at future psychopathy.

But the biggest red flag is early violence. "Most of the psychopaths I meet in prison had been
in fights with teachers in elementary school or junior high," Kiehl says. "When I'd interview them,
I'd say, 'What's the worst thing you did in school?' And they'd say, 'I beat the teacher unconscious.'
You're like, That really happened? It turns out that's very common."

... ... ...

The second hallmark of a psychopathic brain is an overactive reward system especially primed
for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement. In one study, children
played a computer gambling game programmed to allow them to win early on and then slowly begin to
lose. Most people will cut their losses at some point, Kent Kiehl notes, "whereas the psychopathic,
callous unemotional kids keep going until they lose everything." Their brakes don't work, he says.

Faulty brakes may help explain why psychopaths commit brutal crimes: Their brains ignore cues
about danger or punishment. "There are all these decisions we make based on threat, or the fear that
something bad can happen," says Dustin Pardini, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor
of criminology at Arizona State University. "If you have less concern about the negative consequences
of your actions, then you'll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you
get caught, you'll be less likely to learn from your mistakes."

Researchers see this insensitivity to punishment even in some toddlers. "These are the kids that
are completely unperturbed by the fact that they've been put in time-out," says Eva Kimonis, who
works with callous children and their families at the University of New South Wales, in Australia.
"So it's not surprising that they keep going to time-out, because it's not effective for them. Whereas
reward-they're very motivated by that."

Listed below is the Hare
Psychopathy
Checklist
-Revised, a diagnostic tool used to identify
psychopathic traits.

It was compiled by Dr. Robert Hare, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the
University of British Columbia, where he has taught and conducted research for
more than four decades, devoting most of his academic career to the study of
psychopathy
.

Dr. Hare created the
psychopathy checklist
as a tool to
determine the length of stay for criminals in prison. It's obvious that the
degree of
psychopathic traits
present in criminals would play a
deciding factor on the length of stay. Dr. Hare ranks each trait on a scale of
0-3. For example, if a prisoner ranks 1 on all 20 traits, then he or she would
rank 20. Someone who ranks a 3 on all 20 traits would receive a score of 60 and
would probably receive a longer length of stay in prison.

Dr. Hare spends much time with each prisoner and consequently, scores them to
his best abilities. But even to Dr. Hare's own chagrin, he has been duped by many
psychopaths. With that in mind, please do not read through the traits and
instantly analyze everyone in your life. This information is meant to give you an
overview and it's something you can use as a tool to assess yourself and to use
wisely when assessing others.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised

GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM
- The tendency to be smooth,
engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in
the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything. A psychopath never
gets tongue-tied. They have freed themselves from the social conventions about
taking turns in talking, for example.

GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH
- A grossly inflated view of one's
abilities and self-worth, self-assured, opinionated, cocky, a braggart.
Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.

NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM
- An
excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances
and doing things that are risky. Psychopaths often have low self-discipline in
carrying tasks through to completion because they get bored easily. They fail
to work at the same job for any length of time, for example, or to finish tasks
that they consider dull or routine.

PATHOLOGICAL LYING
- Can be moderate or high; in moderate
form, they will be shrewd, crafty, cunning, sly, and clever; in extreme form,
they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and
dishonest.

CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS
- The use of deceit and
deception to cheat, con, or defraud others for personal gain; distinguished
from Item #4 in the degree to which exploitation and callous ruthlessness is
present, as reflected in a lack of concern for the feelings and suffering of
one's victims.

LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT
- A lack of feelings or concern
for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims; a tendency to be unconcerned,
dispassionate, cold-hearted, and non-empathic. This item is usually
demonstrated by a disdain for one's victims.

SHALLOW AFFECT
- Emotional poverty or a limited range or
depth of feelings; interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open
gregariousness.

CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY
- A lack of feelings
toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.

PARASITIC LIFESTYLE
- An intentional, manipulative,
selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others as reflected in a lack
of motivation, low self-discipline, and inability to begin or complete
responsibilities.

PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
- A variety of brief,
superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of
sexual partners; the maintenance of several relationships at the same time; a
history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity or taking
great pride at discussing sexual exploits or conquests.

LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS
- An inability or
persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals; a nomadic
existence, aimless, lacking direction in life.

IMPULSIVITY
- The occurrence of behaviors that are
unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation,
frustrations, and urges; a lack of deliberation without considering the
consequences; foolhardy, rash, unpredictable, erratic, and reckless.

IRRESPONSIBILITY
- Repeated failure to fulfill or honor
obligations and commitments; such as not paying bills, defaulting on loans,
performing sloppy work, being absent or late to work, failing to honor
contractual agreements.

FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS
- A
failure to accept responsibility for one's actions reflected in low
conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, antagonistic manipulation, denial
of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.

MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS
- A lack of
commitment to a long-term relationship reflected in inconsistent, undependable,
and unreliable commitments in life, including marital.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
- Behavior problems between the ages
of 13-18; mostly behaviors that are crimes or clearly involve aspects of
antagonism, exploitation, aggression, manipulation, or a callous, ruthless
tough-mindedness.

REVOCATION OF CONDITION RELEASE
- A revocation of
probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations, such as
carelessness, low deliberation, or failing to appear.

CRIMINAL VERSATILITY
- A diversity of types of criminal
offenses, regardless if the person has been arrested or convicted for them;
taking great pride at getting away with crimes.The word psychopath can be
replaced with the word sociopath throughout this page. The meaning is very
similar, if not the same.

General caveat: in the absence of generally accepted "objective" categories, the ICD/DCM "deviancy"
descriptions skew heavily towards (or certainly smell of) lack of expected social conformance.
(Even less than a century ago, it was not uncommon that "uncooperative" relatives or wives, or
reticent individuals were committed to get rid of them, strip them of their civil rights, or obtain
control of their assets - with the cooperation of the public and private sector psychiatric profession).
That's not to say they don't have a basis in fact.

W.r.t. sociopathy, a characterization I found useful was "treating other people like video
game characters" (and the word "pawn" (in the sense of chess) pretty much suggests itself). It
is consistent with the criteria you listed.

Other than that, it is a sliding scale/shades of gray, not a yes/no kind of thing.

"
W.r.t. sociopathy, a characterization I found useful was "treating other people like video
game characters" (and the word "pawn" (in the sense of chess) pretty much suggests itself).
It is consistent with the criteria you listed.

Other than that, it is a sliding scale/shades of gray, not a yes/no kind of thing.

"

That's a very good observation. Thank you !

Treating people like video game characters = lack of compassion = objectification

"(Even less than a century ago, it was not uncommon that "uncooperative" relatives or wives,
or reticent individuals were committed to get rid of them, strip them of their civil rights,
or obtain control of their assets - with the cooperation of the public and private sector psychiatric
profession).
"

Of course you can create a cliché out of any definition and use it against people you do not
like. But sociopathy is a real danger in modern society, especially in terms of "high functioning
sociopaths" (if you look under this angle at Clinton family you will find some interesting and
disturbing correlations) which neoliberalism implicitly promotes as it by objectifying everything.

And in this sense neoliberalism is a sociopathic ideology == natural, very convenient ideology
for sociopaths.

Notable quotes:

"... It is innate to the system, as capitalism itself is sociopathic. ..."

Paine said in reply to Peter K....
March 30, 2017 at 07:34 AM
Corporate aims are inevitably sociopathic at key moments. The
contradiction between corporate aims and social welfare is
ineluctable

Social democracy in the 30 - 60's was an attempt to
cushion society from the welfare depredations of its
corporations

The struggle to constrain corporations by progressive
liberals having failed abysmally by 1930. The liberals joined
de facto social democrats in a new wave of regulations
imposed on financial corporations.

Various hallmark sociopath traits are listed below. It is
important to note that not all traits will be present in all
the "sociopaths".

According to ICD-10 criteria, presence of 3 or more of the
following qualifies for the diagnosis of antisocial
personality disorder (~sociopathy):

1.Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.

2.Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and
disregard for social norms, and obligations.

3.Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though
having no difficulty in establishing them.

4.Very low tolerance to frustration, a low threshold for
discharge of aggression, including violence.

5.Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from
experience, particularly punishment.

6.Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible
rationalization for the behavior that has brought the person
into conflict with society.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM IV-TR) is another widely used tool for the diagnosis and
it defines sociopath traits as:

A) Pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the
rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated
by three or more of the following:

1.Failure to conform to social norms with respect to
lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts
that are grounds for arrest

2.Deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of
aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure

3.Impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead

4.Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by
repeated physical fights or assaults

5.Reckless disregard for safety of self or others

6.Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated
failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor
financial obligations

7.Lack of remorse as indicated by being indifferent to or
rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

... ... ...

Sociopathy vs. Psychopathy vs. Antisocial Personality
Disorder

There is often confusion between these terminologies
because of wide overlapping of the features. Sociopathy is
nearly synonymous with antisocial personality disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder is a medical diagnosis which
is commonly termed as sociopathy. However, some people may
have some features of sociopathy which may not be suffice to
meet the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality
disorder. They may also be called (albeit wrongly)
sociopaths.

Some people consider psychopathy synonymous with
sociopathy. However, psychopathy is a more severe form of
sociopathy. Psychopathy is not a defined diagnosis in the
widely used DSM-IV criteria for the diagnosis of mental
disorders. Most of psychopaths will meet the diagnostic
criteria for antisocial personality disorder, however vice
versa is not true and only 1/3rd of the sociopaths will meet
the criteria for psychopathy.

High Functioning Sociopath

High functioning sociopath is term used to describe people
with sociopath traits that also happen to have a very high
intelligence quotient.

They are likely to be highly successful in the field they
endeavor (politics, business, etc.).

They plan very meticulously and the presence of
sociopathic traits like lack of empathy, lack of remorse,
deceptiveness, shallow emotions, etc. makes it very difficult
for "normal" people to compete with them.
Reply
Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 06:52 PM

This paper argues that pedophilia may represent a special case or subcase of psychopathy and
that the main aims of both the psychopath and the pedophile are to dominate, to use, and to subjugate
another person in service of the grandiose self. [...] It notes that the major differences between
psychopaths and pedophiles are that the object of the predation for the pedophile is a child and
that the overt behavioral manifestation of the pathology is sexual.

"Hierarchies aren't natural phenomena within the human race. Outside of parenting, human beings
aren't born with the inclination to be ruled, controlled, 'managed,' and 'supervised' by other human
beings" [
The
Hampton Institute
]. Hierarchies are artificial constructs designed to serve a purpose. They are
a necessity within any society that boasts high degrees of wealth and power inequities. They are a
necessity for maintaining these inequities and ensuring they are not challenged from below."

"Hierarchies aren't natural phenomena within the human race. Outside of
parenting, human beings aren't born with the inclination to be ruled,
controlled, 'managed,' and 'supervised' by other human beings" [The Hampton
Institute].

This is a complex subject, but I'll hazard a guess that Colin Jenkins, the
author of the article, is wrong. Our close relatives the chimpanzees and
gorillas have dominance hierarchies, and one's position in the hierarchy can be
enforced by violence. Even bonobos have dominance hierarchies, although they
are much less violent than their cousins. Human hierarchies have existed for
tens of thousands of years, which has been verified by differences in burial
goods at grave sites. With the invention of agriculture around eleven or twelve
thousand years ago, hierarchicalism really took off.

I'm not saying that hierarchies are good simply because they are natural.
Complex hierarchies and the associated severe inequality are very bad.

Hierarchies aren't natural phenomena within the human race. Outside of
parenting, human beings aren't born with the inclination to be ruled,
controlled, 'managed,' and 'supervised' by other human beings.

True, maybe, for hunter gatherers, but unlikely.

Otherwise the assertion is not supported by any facts for any human group
anywhere. Please provide examples which support this statement.

I've lived in many places and seen many things. I've never even heard of
a group of humans without a leader, and hence a hierarchy.

Even hunter gatherers have hierarchies. They just don't have much
material inequality. But there is probably some inequality, as grave
sites have shown (of course there is uncertainty and controversy about
this). See this for more information:

The Rainbow Family is a (dis)organization with no leaders. There are
those who "focalize" (focus + organize) people to get things done but no
leader or spokesperson. It makes it much harder to quash a movement that
has no discernible head to remove or co-opt.

If you want to borrow from Deleuze & Guattari in Capitalism and
Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, the hierarchy learned within the family is one
of the main methods society uses to prepare you for an authoritarian
society, and that the existence of the nuclear family shouldn't be seen as
separate from society but one of its basic building blocks. I'm greatly over
simplifying, but one of its many basic arguments is that conditioning
children to unquestioningly accept the authority of the father is a sort of
training wheels version of the eventual submission to the boss, the drill
sergeant, the political leader.

I'd also argue that this split between what is and isn't natural is
tenuous at best. Even if I were to accept the argument that hierarchy "isn't
natural" it's not like we could ever hope to return to such a state of
nature, so it becomes almost a complete non sequitur.

Hierarchies direct significant resources toward enforcing the Order.
Empires have larger standing armies and military sectors than free states.
Impoverished people, that is, those excluded from resources by the Order,
tend to find their communities more heavily policed and less valued as
citizens.

Ditto. My sentiments run toward equality and fighting hierarchy seems a
noble effort. The status quo affects of entrenched hierarchies are pretty
ugly in the lower tiers and justice would be served by altering the social
system to accommodate the grievances. To argue that social hierarchies are
not natural is tantamount to arguing against societies at all.
Even
slime molds
create structures to reproduce.

re: Hierarchies. I'm convinced sociopathy is at the root of this problem.
And there may be something about the species that makes us all prone to this
condition. Much more work needs to be done and I think the answers will make a
lot of people uncomfortable.

Re "Hierarchies aren't natural phenomena within the human race." As a
sociologist, I must with regret snark: "Further research is necessary." (Ha,
ha, how do you answer this question with research?) This is, nonetheless, a
central question of human nature which sociologists and anthropologists are
unable to reach consensus on. If we're in a sociopathic system, that's
mote-or-less a Marxist view and actually a hopeful sign that our cultural
pathology can be overcome. If what we have now is a social system that
reflects the inherent nature of humans to dominate one another -more-or-less
a Weberian Iron Cage view-, the implication is clear. Another possibility:
Hierarchy appears as surplus resources are generated, and an egalitarian
system develops when resources cannot be accumulated, i.e, hunters and
gatherers. As opposed to the certainty with which economists speak (false
bravado though it may be), sociologists and anthropologists are best
characterized by the phrase, "Well, on the one hand " To me, it's astounding
how few sociologists are deeply engaged in recognizing and then studying the
collapse of the current system and how it bears on the hierarchy question.

"... American Legion Magazine ..."

"... The Ten Commandments ..."

Back when I was a boy, I watched
entirely too much television. Of course,
who could blame me? Tempted by a luxuriant
three, count them, three channels, albeit
one of them fuzzy in bad weather, to choose
from! However, I do not regret watching
the
Early Show
on Channel 3. Back
in those bygone days, many stations would
run old movies from the thirties, forties
and fifties, between 3:00 PM-5:00 PM. Thus
I first experienced some of the classics of
cinema, and one of my favorites was
Double Indemnity
, 1944, the first of
the film noire genre. Adultery and murder
were perhaps too mature topics for me in my
initial pre-teen viewings, but I was
fascinated by it because it seemed to be a
playing out on screen of what I was
learning at the time from
The Baltimore
Catechism
: that sin will lead
inevitably to destruction unless contrition
and amendment are made. The film was
fortunate to have at its center three
masters of the craft of acting.

Fred MacMurray, born in Kankakee,
Illinois, 37 miles from my abode, in 1907,
was a good guy in real life and usually in
reel life. A firm Catholic and staunch
Republican, he tried to join the military
after Pearl Harbor but a punctured ear drum
kept him out of service. He adopted a
total of four kids with his two wives: his
first wife dying from cancer in 1953, and
his second wife remaining his wife until
his death. (Such fidelity was as rare in
Hollywood then as it is now.) On screen
MacMurray played to type and was almost
always a good guy, but not always, and it
is ironic that the two best performances
of his career came when he played bad
guys: weak, lustful and doomed Walter Neff
in
Double Indemnity
and the
scheming, cowardly Lieutenant Thomas
Keefer in
The Caine Mutiny
.

Barbara Stanwyck had a Dickensian
childhood from which she was lucky to
emerge alive, her mother dying of a
miscarriage and her father going off to
work on the Panama Canal and never being
heard from again. A series of foster homes
followed, which Ruby Catherine Stevens, as
Stanwyck was then named, constantly ran
away from. Dropping out of school at 14 to
begin working, she never looked back.
Breaking into show business by becoming a
dancer in the Ziegfield Follies at age 16,
she was a star on broadway in the play
Burlesque
before she turned 20.
Changing her name to Barbara Stanwyck, she
broke into films immediately thereafter,
displaying a flair for both drama and
comedy, specializing in strong independent
women. Her personal, as opposed to her
professional, life was a mess. Married in
1928 to her Burlesque co-star Frank Fay,
they adopted a son, Stanwyck having been
rendered sterile by an abortion at 15. The
marriage ended in divorce in 1935, Fay
during the marriage often slapping Stanwyck
around when he was drunk. Stanwyck got
custody of their son. Stanwyck was a
hovering and authoritarian mother, leading
to a life long alienation from her son
after he became an adult. Stanwyck married
actor Robert Taylor in 1939, and, after
numerous acts of infidelity on both sides,
divorced in 1950. Ironically Stanwyck and
Taylor did stay friends after their
divorce, Stanwyck, who never remarried,
referring to him as the true love of her
life. In her politics Stanwyck was a
staunch conservative Republican who
supported the investigations of Congress
into Communist infiltration into
Hollywood. Remaining in demand as an
actress almost until her death in 1990, she
filled her last years with charitable
work. Stanwyck was well equipped by her
own tumultuous life to give depth to her
portrayal of the murderous, scheming
Phyllis Dietrichson in
Double Indemnity
.

Although remembered today chiefly for
his gangster roles and his portrayal of the
rat-like Dathan in
The Ten
Commandments,
Edward G. Robinson was
actually an actor with a very broad range
of work: comedies, dramas, historical
epics, you name it. By 1944 he was age 51
and realized that his days as a leading man
were coming to a close. His half
comedic role as the insurance claims
adjuster Barton Keyes in
Double
Indemnity
he viewed as a step in his
transition to being a character actor.
Always a liberal, Robinson was blacklisted
in Hollywood due to his affiliation with
Communist front groups. Robinson admitted
as much by an article he wrote for the
American Legion Magazine
entitled "How
the Reds Made a Sucker Out of Me". His
comeback came when anti-Communist director
Cecil B. DeMille, who thought that Robinson
had been treated unfairly, cast him in the
scene-stealing role of Dathan in
The
Ten Commandments
.

"... After reading Zari's book just once, i gradually felt that much needed shift - the chapter 'Tactics Of Emotional Warfare' details a list of characteristics of the Narcissistic personality ..."

This book is a desperately needed wake up call to NS men needing fluorescent illumination
in the middle of "gaslight" and other

" I really identified with the "role reversal" and truth that there are men that suffer under
a female N's tactics. The severity and persistence of the female N is exposed brilliantly in this
book.

Having Zari identify the male as a victim of the narcissist is crucial to helping men break
free of the craziness, while also helping men identify why they feel so stuck loving the woman
they have committed their souls to.

Also crucial, is the chapter that breaks out the difficulty
of "no contact" when children are involved. While many N relationships share much in common, the
male NS suffers under societies prescribed male strengths, and serves to undermine the ability
of men to overcome being trapped.

Society typically has the female's back, especially narcissistic
women, as they are often the victims of stereotypical males (in real life and fictional portrayals).

Kudos to the Author for helping unlock the chains of this forbidden subject. There are, not undeservedly,
many explicatives used in this book. I believe the strong words are appropo representations of
the years of suffering and pain inflicted by the narcissist on their supply.

The author's insights
will likely help release many NS men from their prison within.

" Guys, if your life is one gigantic roller coaster ride of being seduced, destroyed emotionally,
and then kicked to the curb when you say anything, then this is the place to start. If you're
looking at this review, then you know something in your relationship is slowly poisoning you to
death. It is NOT you! Wanna know why? Get the book!!!

" If you have any questions about the patterns in your relationship this will help. More research
on narcissism and manipulation will be needed, but it offers some good advice about seeing more
clearly the issues that might lie hidden in the shade.

" I was married to a narc women for several years, and we share a daughter. I thank Zari Ballard
for this excellent account of how narc females move around in society, mostly unknown to other
people, friends and relatives who judge them just as "weird" or "arrogant".

In my case, I felt
like a man who was for years playing on a stage and with a choreography designed by my ex wife.

Now, thanks to books like this one, I can stand aside and *understand* what went on, and what
is currently going on. As a victim, narcissism makes you crazy, the more you delve into it to
understand it, the more you get tangled in the lies, distorted views of reality, crazy nonsense
"dialogues", etc.

I spent years married with a woman with whom I had no real dialogue, without
noticing it.

If you are a man in distress, and you feel some woman makes you feel miserable, please
read this book to go deep into the causes of your pain. Thanks Zari for your book, thanks from
the many men that suffer the pain inflicted by narcissistic women.

This is a must read if you've been on "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" with one of these psychopaths at
the helm!

" After being systematically brainwashed then discarded, I educated myself by reading everything
I could get my hands on regarding Narcissism and Narcissist abuse, specifically male victims of
these pathological parasites.

I found the content of this book very insightful, helpful, and matter-of-fact.

Zari does not claim to be a doctor, teacher, or therapist. However, she provides a great insight
for surviving this painful ordeal with proven methods of healing from a former victim's prospective.

" An extraordinary, concise, at times darkly humorous and sobering road map to help you on
your way out of the long dark tunnel designed by the female Narcissist. I had suffered for over
a year in this kind of 'relationship', and after the discard was left tortured by self doubt,
depression, and confusion.

After reading Zari's book just once, i gradually felt that much needed
shift - the chapter 'Tactics Of Emotional Warfare' details a list of characteristics of the Narcissistic
personality, which left me feeling as though i had been exorcised by a friendly priest, leaving
me without a shadow of doubt that this was not something i had imagined, nor could have done anything
about.

By the second reading, (the very next day) that brick wall of denial slowly began to crumble,
allowing the undeniable facts to speak for themselves, and sink in. It's easy to feel alone in
times like these, perhaps your friends or family may not completely understand your pain, but Zari does - and I believe this book is the only friend you will need to guide you on your way
back to sanity.

Notable quotes:

"... Your Next Big Thing: 10 Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy. ..."

"... Why was I off that day? ..."

Gaslighting: An insidious form of emotional abuse
Julie Naftulin
Health
Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00 UTC
Once in a while, it's normal to have a fleeting moment where you question
your own sanity, like when you're severely
sleep deprived or
stressed out . But if a relationship leaves you constantly
second-guessing your own instincts and feelings, you may be a victim of a
sophisticated form of
emotional abuse : gaslighting. Like other types of abuse, gaslighting can
happen in all sorts of relationships, including personal, romantic, and
professional.

Ben Michaelis, PhD, a New York City-based clinical psychologist, has worked
with victims of gaslighting. For one of his patients-we'll call her
Marie-the gaslighting began when her husband shouted another woman's name
during sex.
When she tried to discuss the incident with him, he
flatly denied what he'd said and told Marie she was hearing things.
Marie figured she must have had too much to drink. But then the lying
continued: Marie's husband would
change his alibi constantly
,
and when Marie questioned him, he'd say she was acting delusional. It wasn't
until almost a year later when Marie realized her husband had been hiding an
affair the whole time.

"[Gaslighting] is like someone saying the sky is green over and over again,
and at first you'll be like 'no, no,'" says Gail Saltz, MD a psychiatrist
and host of the podcast
The Power of Different .
"Then over time the person starts to
manipulate you into saying 'I guess I can't really see what color the sky
is.' It's just this sense of unreality."

Acknowledging you're a victim of gaslighting like Marie did can be tricky at
first, says Michaelis, who is the author of
Your Next Big Thing: 10
Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy.
"Initially, if someone is
insisting on a reality that is different from your own, you'll think,
Why was I off that day?
Was I tired?
" As the gaslighting
continues,
victims begin to question themselves and their judgment
more and more.
Michaelis says this can go on for months or even
years before they realize they're being gaslighted. "People who experience
gaslighting may show obsessive-compulsive symptoms because they want to
constantly check themselves and recheck themselves," says Dr. Michaelis. The
confidence-depleting nature of gaslighting could contribute to increased
anxiety in many or all aspects of a victim's life, not only in the
relationship. Many gaslighting victims berate themselves or feel the need to
apologize all the time, explains Dr. Saltz.

Gaslighting can manifest in a workplace environment as well. "Your boss may
use gaslighting to hide a mistake or cover up information they didn't mean
to share," says Michaelis.
"It can also be a passive-aggressive
gesture used among peers who are competing."

If you realize you're being gaslighted, the first thing you need to
recognize is that a gaslighter may not be conscious of the effects of their
actions, especially if they have issues with being wrong or out of control.
In this case, confronting the gaslighter could work. Michaelis suggests
conducting all conversations you have with the gaslighter in a recorded
format, like through email or text. Then, when gaslighting occurs, tell the
person what they originally said.
"If they continue do deny what
they said, you can supply the recorded evidence so they have a concrete
understanding of what happened,"
says Michaelis. This method works
best when confronting a friend or partner.

In professional relationships, Michaelis suggests reaching out to a third
party, like human resources, which can make the confrontation more
objective. You can take this route in your personal relationships as well by
enlisting a friend or family member to help. "If you find it happening to
you, be thoughtful of the person's motivations," Michaelis says. "They don't
usually do it out of pure ill-will. It usually correlates with trying to
cover something up, so first try to repair the relationship if it's worth
it."

If confrontation fails and ending the relationship is an option, Dr. Saltz
recommends doing so. Michaelis agrees: "All relationships are changeable.
Maybe not immediately, but they are changeable or
severable if need
be
," he says.

If you have to stick it out with a gaslighter, though, try to boost your
confidence with the support of good friends. "If you're having a hard time
changing the situation, they can bolster your reality otherwise," says
Michaelis. In a work environment,
you should also be wary of what
information you share with a gaslighter
. Michaelis suggests
withholding personal life details with a gaslighting co-worker or boss to
protect yourself from emotional abuse in the office.

No matter which method you choose, it's important to take control of reality
again, says Dr. Saltz. This involves
setting limits that stop
gaslighting attempts in their tracks
. For example, if your boss
calls you overly sensitive when you ask, "Why won't you let me work on big
company projects?" demand true feedback rather than accepting blame on your
character. "It's holding the line for what you're wanting to achieve," Dr.
Saltz says, "and not buying into accusations intended to knock down
self-confidence."
Comment:
Many psychiatric professionals agree that even
strong, intelligent, confident, and stable people can become vulnerable to
this form of emotional manipulation. Intelligence and emotions are not the
same thing and
a gaslighters' key maneuver is to prey on emotion
rather than intelligence.
Gaslighting is a
specific,
conscious, deliberate tactic of manipulation and control.

Notable quotes:

"... No. Don't do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing ..."

"... I don't care what happens to the world because I'm getting even ..."

"... Someone who has money, and sex, and rock and roll, and everything they want may still be psychopathic-but they may just manipulate people, or use people, and not kill them. They may hurt others, but not in a violent way. ..."

The key question is whether he is a charlatan wanting publicly or a honest reseracher? If I
were him I would make a second scan in othe demical instition befor jumping to conclution, That fact
that he did not do even this completly undermined his credibility. Also phychopath is not medical
diagnisis.
Jan 21, 2014 | http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/life-as-a-nonviolent-psychopath/282271/ | Judith Ohikuare

Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the
brain of a psychopath
--[and he might be wrong -- NNB]

You used to believe that people were roughly 80 percent the result of genetics, and 20 percent the
result of their environment. How did this discovery cause a shift in your thinking?

I went into this with the bias of a scientist who believed, for many years, that genetics were
very, very dominant in who people are-that your genes would tell you who you were going to be. It's
not that I no longer think that biology, which includes genetics, is a major determinant; I just
never knew how profoundly an early environment could affect somebody.

... ... ...

While I was writing this book, my mother started to tell me more things about myself. She said
she had never told me or my father how weird I was at certain points in my youth, even though I was
a happy-go-lucky kind of kid. And as I was growing up, people all throughout my life said I could
be some kind of gang leader or Mafioso don because of certain behavior. Some parents forbade their
children from hanging out with me. They'd wonder how I turned out so well-a family guy, successful,
professional, never been to jail and all that.

... ... ...

I found out that I happened to have a series of genetic alleles, "warrior genes," that had to do
with serotonin and were thought to be at risk for aggression, violence, and low emotional and
interpersonal empathy-if you're raised in an abusive environment. But if you're raised in a very
positive environment, that can have the effect of offsetting the negative effects of some of the
other genes.

... ... ...

After all of this research, I started to think of this experience as an opportunity to do
something good out of being kind of a jerk my entire life. Instead of trying to fundamentally
change-because it's very difficult to change anything-I wanted to use what could be considered
faults, like narcissism, to an advantage; to do something good.

... ... ...

I started with simple things of how I
interact with my wife, my sister, and my mother. Even though they've always been close to
me, I don't treat them all that well. I treat strangers pretty well-really well, and people
tend to like me when they meet me -- but
I treat my family the same way, like they're just somebody at a bar. I treat them well, but
I don't treat them in a special way. That's the big problem.

I asked them this -- it's not something a
person will tell you spontaneously -- but they said, "I give you everything. I give you all
this love and you really don't give it back." They all said it, and that sure bothered me.
So I wanted to see if I could change. I don't believe it, but I'm going to try.

In order to do that, every time I started to do something, I had to think about it, look
at it, and go:
No. Don't do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing
.
Step-by-step, that's what I've been doing for about a year and a half and they all like it.
Their basic response is: We know you don't really mean it, but we still like it.

I told them, "You've got to be kidding me. You accept this? It's phony!" And they said,
"No, it's okay. If you treat people better it means you care enough to try." It blew me
away then and still blows me away now.

But treating everyone the same isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it? Is it just
that the people close to you want more from you?

Yes. They absolutely expect and demand more. It's a kind of cruelty, a kind of abuse,
because you're not giving them that love. My wife to this day says it's hard to be with me
at parties because I've got all these people around me, and I'll leave her or other people
in the cold. She is not a selfish person, but I can see how it can really work on somebody.

I gave a talk two years ago in India at the Mumbai LitFest on personality disorders and
psychopathy, and we also had a historian
from Oxford talk about violence against women in terms of the brain and social development.
After it was over, a woman came up to me and asked if we could talk. She was a psychiatrist
but also a science writer and said, "You said that you live in a flat emotional world-that
is, that you treat everybody the same. That's Buddhist." I don't know anything about
Buddhism but she continued on and said, "It's too bad that the people close to you are so
disappointed in being close to you. Any learned Buddhist would think this was great." I
don't know what to do with that.

Sometimes the truth is not just that it hurts, but that it's just so disappointing. You
want to believe in romance and have romance in your life-even the most hardcore, cold
intellectual wants the romantic notion. It kind of makes life worth living. But with these
kinds of things, you really start thinking about what a machine it means we are-what it
means that some of us don't need those feelings, while some of us need them so much. It
destroys the romantic fabric of society in a way.

So what I do, in this situation, is think: How do I treat the people in my life as if
I'm their son, or their brother, or their husband? It's about going the extra mile for them
so that they know I know this is the right thing to do. I know when the situation comes up,
but my gut instinct is to do something selfish. Instead, I slow down and try to think about
it. It's like dumb behavioral modification; there's no finesse to this, but I said, well,
why does there have to be finesse? I'm trying to treat it as a straightaway thing, when the
situation comes up, to realize there's a chance that I might be wrong, or reacting in a
poor way, or without any sort of love-like a human.

... ... ...

In some ways, though, the stakes are different for you because you're not
violent-and isn't that the concern? Relative to your own life, your attempts to change may
positively impact your relationships with your friends, family, and colleagues. But in the
case of possibly violent people, they may harm others.

The jump from being a "prosocial" psychopath or somebody on the edge who doesn't act out
violently, to someone who really is a real, criminal predator is not clear. For me, I think
I was protected because I was brought up in an upper-middle-class, educated environment
with very supportive men and women in my family. So there may be a mass convergence of
genetics and environment over a long period of time. But
what would happen if I lost my family or lost my job; what would I then become? That's the
test.

For people who have the fundamental
biology-the genetics, the brain patterns, and that early existence of trauma-first of all,
if they're abused they're going to be pissed off and have a sense of revenge:
I don't
care what happens to the world because I'm getting even
. But a real, primary
psychopath doesn't need that. They're just predators who don't need to be angry at all;
they do these things because of some fundamental lack of connection with the human race,
and with individuals, and so on.

Someone who has money, and sex, and
rock and roll, and everything they want may still be psychopathic-but
they may just manipulate people, or use people, and not kill them. They may hurt others,
but not in a violent way.
Most people care about violence-that's the thing. People may say,
"Oh, this very bad investment counselor was a psychopath"-but the essential difference in
criminality between that and murder is something we all hate and we all fear. It just isn't
known if there is some ultimate trigger.

... ... ...

,,, For personality disorders it's
not really known when they will emerge because it's very understudied. People will say, you
can't do anything about it, it's locked in and there seems to be almost no treatment.
Whereas, for things like depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, you can do
something about it. There are drugs, or things you can do with brain stimulation and talk
therapy, so that's where Big Pharma and the whole industry goes.

...A lot of kids,
most
kids, get
bullied and they may get pissed off, but that doesn't create a personality disorder. But
there are 20 percent of kids who are really susceptible and they may ultimately be
triggered for a personality disorder in puberty. If
we know these children can be helped by making sure that they aren't abused or
abandoned-because you've got to get there really early-well,
then, that would be important to do. I don't mean to preach.

... ... ...

It means, for example, that if you have
to go to war, and sometimes you probably have to go to war-I'm not talking about a
belligerent country starting war or fomenting discord, but if you
have
to go to war and to engage infantry-you
do not send 18-year-olds into it, because their brains aren't set. They don't know how to
adjudicate what's happening emotionally and hormonally with the intellectualization of
it. When you're 20, 25, it's a different matter because things gel a little more. Our
emotions don't get away from us as much in terms of what is happening. Other factors,
sociological ones like what soldiers return to, are also important, but we're not going to
get rid of war any time soon, so we might as well engage in a way that does the least
amount of damage.

In terms of legal action, you've been
used as a researcher for court cases-not to determine guilt or innocence, but for
sentencing. Do you think there's a moral boundary for that since we don't have enough
knowledge on this field yet to determine guilt or innocence?

We don't have enough research. You can't just take genetics-even though I'm a big
proponent of it-or imaging, and tell if someone's a criminal or a psychopath. If you put
together all that information, you could explain a lot of behavior and causality and early
abuse-but we don't know enough.

So, when I get a case to look at, first
of all, I don't accept money-and
it's not because I'm a nice guy. It's because I think I'd be biased. I don't accept any
payment and I don't want to know who the person is. We all try to create a story or
narrative, and I'm just as weak as anybody. I'll tell the defense attorney, or public
defender, or whoever it is to just send me scans, maybe with normal scans to try to throw
me off, and then I'll look at them and discuss what the traits of the person might be based
on the lack of activity in certain areas or not.

I can usually say, "Oh, this person
might have a language problem," or "This person might have trouble with impulsivity." After
all of that analysis is there, we can look at their traits and see what they've done.

... ... ...

Some people have this psychopathy or
are almost psychopaths, and they get into trouble and go right to jail and end up in the
prison system as 18-year-olds. It's awful because they get unlucky and they don't have
enough impulse control to pull it back at the last instant. So, what is that edge where
somebody's got these traits, and they are impulsive? What puts one guy on a pathway to
becoming an attorney or successful in general, and the other one has life in prison? We
just have to find out what that edge is. I think we will have parameters to work with, but
it's not the same for everybody.

tim305
•
3 years ago
I am looking forward to the sequel, where he learns that he really isn't
a psychopath after all. His brother switched the MRI's as a practical
joke to get back at him for the African incident.

Bluestocking
•
3 years ago
In my lifetime I've known 2-3 people like Fallon - fully functioning,
non-violent psychopaths. It didn't surprise me that his friends and
family were not surprised. It did surprise me that he did not see these
qualities in himself.

kmihindu
Bluestocking
•
3 years ago
What would be very interesting would be to hear his wife's
perspective. What attracted her to him? When did she realize he was a
psychopath? Why did she stay with him? What is marriage to a
non-violent psychopath like?

Bluestocking
kmihindu
•
3 years ago
I just read Sam Smith's comment (above) and I imagine that goes
some way towards answering your question. The individuals I knew
were psychically attractive and quite charismatic. They functioned
very well in group/social situations, but when it came to
one-on-one a lot of people (myself included) wanted nothing to do
with them because they were manipulative and used other people as
a means to an end. 'What is marriage to a non-violent psychopath
like?' A great question. One of the people I knew was a room-mate
for about a year. It was appalling. You do begin to question your
own sanity. It was only after the experience that I was able to
see what had really been going on, and I can't imagine how much
more intense it would be if you were also in a sexual relationship
or a marriage.

kmihindu
Bluestocking
•
3 years ago
I had a mentor in grad school that I would armchair diagnose as
a non-violent psychopath. He was so manipulative, that while
working for him, you would begin to question your sanity. He
didn't know how to manipulate people in a positive manner
(because he made promises and never kept them), so he would
resort to threats. He once defended a threat he had made to me
(to kick me out of his lab with no degree for failing to
discover why 2 proteins of unknown function were interacting
fast enough) by saying, "You should have realized that I didn't
mean it. I tell my kids all the time that I don't love them
when I'm mad at them, but I don't mean it." All I could think
was, "Thank God, I'm only his student and not his kid."

matimal
kmihindu
•
3 years ago
Me too. I don't know how a faculty member in my former
academic department kept her job after the things she said
and did to me and to others in my presence. No one seemed to
notice, or was too afraid of her to bring it up.

kmihindu
matimal
•
3 years ago
Productivity. As long as he was publishing, he was given
free reign. When I finally went to talk to the dean, the
comment was, "What took so long? Everyone from your lab
comes to see us sooner or later." WTH?

kmihindu
knowltok
•
3 years ago
I try not to be repetitious, but this was a
life changing event for me. It caused me to
completely rethink my philosophy of life and
had the additional benefit that it worsened a
chronic disease I have, the more aggressive
treatment of which made it possible for my
daughter to be conceived. It also lead me to
declare some behavior as unacceptable and to
refuse to accept this type of behavior
(rather than taking responsibility for others
behavior and finding excuses for them ad
naseum).

knowltok
kmihindu
•
3 years ago
By all means, repeat the story if it fits.
In no way was I being critical. Besides,
for internet purposes 'a year or so ago'
is as good as, 'in the time before
legend.' ;)

matimal
kmihindu
•
2 years ago
Her publications and grants were mediocre; far from
the best in the department. I think it was that
administrators didn't want to draw attention to her
actions in the first place. She did leave and not for
an academic department, at least not in the U.S.

allannorthbeach
kmihindu
•
a year ago
Your faculty member sounds quite a bit like Dr.
Valerie Fabrikant who eventually was imprisoned for a
long time in Canada when he went completely off the
rails. Whilst Fabrikant was producing papers and his
colleagues got to add their names to his papers then
everything was rosy but Fabrikant took exception to
his colleagues trying to ride for free on his
coat-tails.

Monkey_pants
matimal
•
2 years ago
I worked with someone like that at MIT. One of her grad
students came to me right after I started working there
to warn me about her. I didn't understand at first, and
then the bizarre manipulations started. Her previous
assistant left because she had a nervous breakdown, and
all of the other division staff refused to even talk
directly to her. She was charming and flattering to all
of the faculty above her, though.

It's the
ability to manipulate that wins the psychopath sex and friends,
at least in the short term. Apparently my dad was only violent
while he was young - he did a stint in prison and then 'got
religion', but the manipulation was how he got what he wanted
the rest of his life.

His third wife seems to have been happy enough with him, but
I don't really see how. I wanted nothing to do with him and I'm
his child.

Linda Solecki
KateH
•
2 years ago
I think what is difficult to remember and to wrap our heads
around is that these individuals truly don't care if you
care. Your dad's manipulation was part of his character as
easy and un-noticed as his other characteristics. Don't we
all have characteristics that we don't recognize in
ourselves but may be very apparent to others?

emikoala
Bluestocking
•
2 years ago
The hallmark of a psychopath/sociopath is that they make
everyone around them feel crazy, because they show no evidence
of doubt in their own rightness...and normal, well-adjusted
people will always leave room for doubt, so when faced with
someone who repeatedly and adamantly insists that the sky is
100% green by every measure, normal well-adjusted people will
begin to think, "Well, maybe it IS green..."

Sönke Zürner
emikoala
•
2 years ago
Also known as self-righteous types. So why the clinical
nomenclature (I ask this of all people who
moralize--articulate normative judgments--in the guise of
scientific objectivity)? It doesn't make your evaluation
(disapprobation) any more consensus worthy. Self-righteous
types are generally disliked and always have been.
Especially when they are right. We just prefer
self-deprecation and the constant refrain:
"that's-just-my-opinion" to obviate "friction" (= envy,
resentment, irritation). The sort of arousal activated by
the sympathetic autonomic system.

Feeling crazy is our
problem. It's not other people but our perceptions of other
people that induces 'craziness.' We may feel crazy in
response to non-pathological behaviors. What constitutes the
feeling of craziness? Contempt? Aggression? Resentment?
Envy? The self-righteous is not least of all labeled
anti-social because he inspires "anti-social" responses. But
this just means that we project our own momentary
derangement--a by-product of our 'empathy.'

We are responsible for our reactions. What we find
unforgivable (blameworthy) in "sociopaths" (boors) is the
sense that they do not have the same scruples we do--they do
not feel the same sense of responsibility about their
reactions because they are busy ACTING. Then we retaliate
for feeling diminished (put in a passive-reactive position)
by calling them psychopaths. Clinical psychology lends
itself to such exercises in retribution.

EllieS
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
As someone else said, psychopathy and self-righteousness
are two different things, as are sociopathy and
boorishness. Clinical nomenclature (naming) allows for
diagnosis and treatment (pills and stuff). While the
terms are thrown around at times without actually meaning
the clinical disorder, they do have value.

But isn't
there a reason in any event for disapproval
(disapprobation [evaluation]) when something causes harm?
If a child kicks another child (taking a foot and mashing
it into some part of the other child's body), are we not
going to reprimand them? So if an individual is causing
psychological harm to another, wouldn't we see that as
negative?

You remind me of a roommate I once had who said that
if I was crying because he threatened to put my dog out
on the street, that was on me; he wasn't _making_ me cry.
No, he was not forcing me to cry, but he was taking an
action that was cruel, and my being upset was a
justifiable (completely understandable and okay)
reaction.

Sönke Zürner
EllieS
•
2 years ago
You seem to have a rather glib view of what
"disapproval" entails in the case of a diagnosis of
psychopathy. The harm caused, retributively but also
by the sheer act of categorizing individuals based on
some perceived pattern of behavior, may outweigh the
offense.

Given that there is no consensus on the
construct of psychopathy and the devastating
consequences it has on the lives of those labeled
psychopaths, we need to be very careful about
diagnosing and medicating 'disorders' whose existence
is a matter of conjecture. Diagnosis is a question of
interpretation, which basically makes it an art. But
unlike a doctor of medicine, who can rely on
established etiologies and facts, psychiatrists must
rely on hypothetical constructs legitimized by
consensus.

We obviously need to treat people who suffer as
well as to disapprove of and punish them. But when the
stakes are so enormous as in the case of diagnosing
so-called psychopaths it is useful to remind ourselves
of the theoretical nature of our constructs and to
proceed with due caution (skepticism) about what we
think we know.

Clearly self-righteousness and psychopathy are
"different things." But the same behavior may be
labeled as evincing either characteristic. The
behavior has to be interpreted. That means an
explanatory/decriptive paradigm must be selected. So
my question is, what are we doing when we categorize
(select) a behavior as psychopathic? How do we avoid
not presupposing what we imagine ourselves to be
"discovering" (avoid confirmation bias)?

Ultimately what the clinician and layperson are
both doing is judging a behavior, and the guidelines
for such evaluation are ultimately moral and political
rather than strictly scientific. The fact that it is
consenus that establishes whether a disorder obtains
is further clue that clinical psychology functions as
a form of applied ethics (the social enforcement of
morality).

P.S. Your room-mate was right. You should have more
control over your feelings. On the other hand, having
too much control (or not having any feelings) may
obviate suffering at the cost of putting you at risk
of cold-heartedness. Your room-mate seems to have
enjoyed manipulating you because you were gullible.

Being vulnerable, trusting and compassionate is
good-within reason. It's a judgment call. His point
was that you should be in a position to make it, to
decide how to respond, and not be led around by your
reactive-self. It may be less warm and fuzzy, but it's
pro-active and reality-syntonic.

wiseaftertheevent
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A standard narcissistic
psychopath technique is to interject themselves
into this kind of debate and make it so confusing
to figure out who is a psychopath they can skate
under the radar. Those of us that are vampire
hunters are on to you.

Dunraven
wiseaftertheevent
•
2 years ago
It's pretty clear who is the narcissistic
psychopath is. I am a little confused that Sonke
seems to care that others view him or her as a
psychopath. Maybe it makes manipulation more
difficult?

Sönke Zürner
wiseaftertheevent
•
2 years ago
The standard no-nothing technique of someone who
cannot engage in argument is to resort to
pitiful ad hominems (character assassination).
Have you ever met a confirmation bias you could
resist? Get ye to the Salem witch trials.

EllieS
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
Certainly there are problems with the diagnostic
tools available to the medical community. And
absolutely there are issues with labeling. However
without diagnosis, individuals would not get the
proper care. I was misdiagnosed as having
depression for years (see below before you think
this proves your point). I don't feel it my duty to
share on here what my actual diagnosis is, but
being properly diagnosed has allowed me to have a
functioning life. The diagnosis of mental disorders
may also save an individual from the death penalty.

And diagnostic tools are improving. If you read the
article above, brain scans were used to uncover an
individual's psychopathy. While these tests are not
done routinely, they do exist. And diagnosis is not
strictly "conjecture." The behavior patterns aren't
"'perceived." They're observed, both by the doctor
and the patient. I hid my true feelings and
behavior from my doctor and that is what
contributed to the incorrect diagnosis. When
correctly diagnosed, medicine and therapy has been
proven to help treat mental disorders. I bear the
stigma of mental disorder every day, but I'll take
that labeling if it means I can function.

However, your assertion that I and others should
not be upset about things that would justifiably be
reasonable is illogical. I love my dog; putting her
out on the street when I was out of town would
result in the loss of my dog. If I had not been
upset about this, had I not cared, I would not have
argued against his doing so, which would have
resulted in harm to my dog. So the emotion that
resulted from his threat has value, just as being
frightened by a bear has value in that it would
save your life. Your argument also removes
culpability from a individual who is behaving in an
unacceptable manner and places it on the victim.
This means we can act however we want and
consequences be damned. Emotional abuse is real.
It's a purposeful attempt to harm another person,
the same as if someone used physical force.

And you seem to be arguing for compassion for
those who have mental disorders. That is admirable.
But then why wouldn't you have the same compassion
for those who are affected by the deeds of others?

Sönke Zürner
EllieS
•
2 years ago
Whether things (one's reactions) are
"justifiably reasonable"is precisely what is in
need of determination. Reacting emotionally has
"value" if and when it is accompanied by a
judgment (evaluation) and a course of action.
Being upset per se has little value except as
spur to taking action. In and of itself it is
passive-reactive. My point was that gullible
types set themselves up for manipulation by
those without scruples, on the assumption that
your 'friend' was in fact jerking your chain.
You did not mention that you had argued about
his threat in your original post. Since you
confronted him, your upset reaction was
instrumental, therefore valid. I'm the last
person who would question the cognitive
significance of affect.

My larger point is
that sensitivity as well as objectivity
vis-a-vis feelings, which inform the empathic
process, are both valid up to a point. They
exist, as does the human personality generally,
on a continuum. But too much reactive
affectivity is as problematical as the
objectivity of the "cold-blooded." And not being
able to turn off empathy is not the hallmark of
optimal mental health some doctors of the soul
would have us believe it to be. We are all
potentially "psychopathic" under the 'right'
circumstances. There are any number of social
roles whose discharge would be unduly
complicated by the kind of empathy we value in a
friend, family member, or co-worker.

Brain scans are indeed used, but there is no
consensus on what they mean in relation to
personality disorders. They yield correlations
subject to interpretation by fallible
specialists. That would be problematical enough,
but add to that mix the controversial nature of
the clinical entity some call "psychopathy"
(among other disorders) and what you wind up
with is very much a process of conjecture.
Granted, some conjecturing is more informed than
others, but that doesn't change the basic nature
of the process.

Read up on the controversy surrounding DSM-5
revisions for a sample of just how divided the
field of psychiatry is.

If you found relief from your suffering
through medication and therapy more power to
you. That's your bottom line, and I respect it.
But bear in mind some people find relief taking
placebos. The human mind is profoundly
suggestible. Perception creates reality. And
that's very much a double-edged sword.

allannorthbeach
Sönke Zürner
•
a year ago
Not forgetting that there are many psychopathic
psychiatrists about who deliberately misdiagnose
psychopathy just for the 'hell' of it, and Dr.
David Rosehan proved just how incompetent
psychiatrists and nursing staff can be when it
suits their hid_den'igrating agendas.

allannorthbeach
Erica_JS
•
a year ago
Don't ever fool yourself that just because psychopaths
lack empathy that they must also lack the capacity to
know right from wrong because they 'feel' that they
have the God-given 'right' to do many things that they
know are 'wrong'.

wiseaftertheevent
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
You're probably a psychopath, pal. Psychopaths do lots of
things, but one of the key things is mess with people's
sense of time, which makes folks feel nuts. The other
thing you keep repeating is the individuality of response
-- and psychopaths are big on the idea of an isolated
sense of self.

marstv@ymail.com
wiseaftertheevent
•
2 years ago
I had come to the same conclusion, indeed we might
have to do with one. It seems obvious that he is
desperately trying to manipulate himself out of his
own disposition, not only to try to, unsuccessfully,
mask his PP behaviour towards us, but primarily to
trick himself into thinking he is not a PP.

RichardMahony
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
Psychopaths are not also known as self-righteous types.
Nor are psychopaths 'crazy' in the way that, say,
schizophrenics are 'crazy'. I suggest you do a little
reading before opinionating on something about which
evidently you know very little.

Sönke Zürner
RichardMahony
•
2 years ago
My comment mainly addressed OUR reactions ("crazy" was
emikoala's term) to so-called psychopathic
behaviors. Try reading comments in context. My point
was that any trait ascribed to a so-called psychopath,
taken by itself or in combination, can be variably
interpreted. The only people helped by the
patholigization of behaviors are prosecutors, the
criminal justice system, pharmaceutical and insurance
companies.

The problem of "opinionating" is not my
problem, it's the problem of clinical psychology as a
whole, as witness the controversy surrounding the
process of devising DSM criteria. There is no
consensus about what constitutes psychopathy, as a
cursory glance at the Wikipedia page would inform you:
(" no psychiatric or psychological organization has
sanctioned a diagnosis titled "psychopathy.") It is an
interpretation, a construct, regarding which the only
fitting scientific attitude to assume is one of
skepticism. There is no place in science for true
believers.

Jillita Hunter
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
Maybe not ALL traits...but what about a person who
has a desire to kill people, strangers or known,
just because they think it would be fun? One who
feels joy from lighting animals on fire? A person
who literally feels no regret, remorse, or guilt
about anything in life (even things that cause
fatal harm to others and ruined lives)? One who
simply doesn't understand when others are upset,
for whatever the reason, because they themselves
have no such feelings. I know I am just a regular
person but to me, those are pretty psychopathic
traits no matter how interpreted.

Sönke Zürner
Jillita Hunter
•
2 years ago
They are "psychopathic" because you use that
concept to summarize the traits you enumerated.
But there is no necessity in doing so. You could
simply describe such individuals as lacking
compassion and being cruel. Either way you
express moral disapprobation and signal a
threat. Which is the whole point of this
exercise in applied ethics (clinical
psychology).

For me the interesting question
is: how often does one have to lapse in one's
sympathizing and abstention from violent
aggression before one becomes "a psychopath?"
What day of the week are we talking about? which
hour of the day? We are all capable of selfish,
aggressive behavior and of not giving a damn.

Jillita Hunter
Sönke Zürner
•
2 years ago
I would think if someone were a psychopath
they wouldn't be lapsing into such thoughts
and behavior.. that is their norm. More like
they would lapse and have moments of what we
define as normalcy.

allannorthbeach
RichardMahony
•
a year ago
Cleckley is no more an expert on psychopathy than the
many putative specialists whom Dr.David Rosenhan et
al. exposed as being but charismatic charlatans of the
very first water.
It's not for nothing that the Royal Society has as its
motto: *Nullius in verba*

allannorthbeach
Sönke Zürner
•
a year ago
People have always utterly despised *sabelotodos* since
time immemorial and it's simply because they *don't know*
any better about how to save themselves from
themsel_ves'ted.

jane
Bluestocking
•
a year ago
correct it is an absolute nightmare you are never" special" you
are taken for granted..emotionally manipulated and
discarded...left with the aftermath all the time and everyone
else thinking it must be you because he is such a lovely guy!
Have you ever sat next to your loved one and felt totally
lonely? that is how I would explain living with a
psychopath..it IS soul destroying...

Guest
kmihindu
•
3 years ago
Why not ask the Darth Cheney family what life is like with a
'non-violent' psychopath. Just because some psychopath do not
practice direct violence does not mean they can not end up killing
millions, in fact they end up killing far, far, many more people
than then ' directly violent' psychopaths.
Chief act of the psychopath is to defend psychopathy and their
power and influence. Every war, every economic collapse, every
ruthless exploitation of humanity can be laid at the feet of
psychopaths. Don't ever let the nice words fool, one of the main
skill of a psychopath, charm, enabled by the complete detachment
from the harm their lies cause, the complete lack of conscience,
in fact they take pride in their lies, their superior skill over
others.

1bestdog
George Peppermint
•
9 months ago
And is that what your propaganda tells you? First of all,
they are individuals. Second of all, the intent of most of
their actions have been to relieve the pain of people, as do
most democrats--politics aside it is the mission statement
of the democratic party to be socially inclusive and help
the disenfranchised. Contrast that with the actions of the
Republican Party of mean and no. Taking food from babies,
and elderly's and sick's mouths. Attacking the very weakest
members of a country, The party leadership and much of the
membership demonstrate the pathology under discussion. Any
protestations otherwise and I call gaslighting

lora120
Guest
•
2 years ago
I was thinking that about Dubya. He tortured animals as a
child. He suffered neglect at the hands of his cold, distant
parents. His over-privileged life immorality and willingness to
be a tool made him President. Then he killed, stole, lied and
ruined millions/ billions even as the damage continues.

Nate Whilk
Guest
•
3 years ago
"Don't ever let the nice words fool, one of the main skill of a
psychopath, charm, enabled by the complete detachment from the
harm their lies cause, the complete lack of conscience, in fact
they take pride in their lies, their superior skill over
others."

Who was it who said over 30 times about the
Affordable Care
Act, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan"?